


Song Without a Name (Reprise)

by LadyYateXel



Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: AU, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Multi, Rewrite, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:45:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 333,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2057940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyYateXel/pseuds/LadyYateXel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Reincarnation is complicated and apparently not a refined system.  When the lines between lives are blurry at best, and memories seep in from the person you were, do you stay the person you are?  Who do you want to be, and do you want to be seen?"</p>
<p>Sharing a bit of a personal experiment in rewriting 'Song Without A Name', a fanfic I began writing in 2004.   You absolutely don't need to the read the original to read this, and I'd actually prefer if you didn't!  If you do decide to track it down, please just keep in mind things have changed in over ten years, even if I'm still using the same summary!</p>
<p>Even more excessive notes inside~!  <strike>Updates on the 10th of the month. </strike>  Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My TV and Your Three Reflections

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Song Without A Name](https://archiveofourown.org/works/544507) by [LadyYateXel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyYateXel/pseuds/LadyYateXel). 



> I don't know what it was that made me decide, “I want to rewrite some of SWAN” after a few years marinating in Deep Space Nine, but I know I was on my way home from buying underwear when I did. Just in case you had delusions of this having a deep or meaningful origin.
> 
> I used to say toward the end of ISH that I didn't want to go back and rewrite any of SWAN just because I didn't want to rewrite the same thing over and over for the rest of my forever. This is mostly a good mode of operation, I recommend it. 
> 
> It fascinates me to revisit old work though, and I often find it beneficial and encouraging in visual art. This was the first time I've ever done it with written work, which is appropriate since SWAN was the first writing I ever shared with anyone, online or off. I ended up getting really excited while making this and I did a lot more than I had planned. Just the first chapter, I told myself in the car with my new underwear. But then I'd forgotten that we don't even meet Johnny until chapter 2, and I couldn't not write him being a charming, quirky, asshole. There were lines of dialog I wanted to revisit too, and there isn't much talking in the opening chapter. And then I remembered how fond I was of Johnny invading Edgar's house and Johnny's keys, and I thought the pink recliner should make an appearance, and and and... it becomes difficult to stop when every chapter contains something that was loved and important.
> 
> It used to say here that I was not going to make it to the end, but this had become such a wonderful thing for me, that yes, I will be taking this version of the story to the end too!
> 
> But there have been some changes, and I hope those of you who read the original story enjoy them. Personal experiment that this is, it isn't beta'd or anything, so kindly accept it 'as is.' Despite that this is still a better work, fuller than the original, and, in my mind, this is the way things should have been done since the start. It's more like the kind of story I'd want to share with other people now. Reboots are in fashion right now, right? So think of it that way, perhaps. 
> 
> And maybe I'll have more of this for you the next time I go out to buy underwear.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three Faces, Acne-Face, Pigtails, Leg-Warmers, and a song.

When he bothered to look, he saw three people in the mirror. They were layered over each other, and each layer was a little older and a little more gaunt than the layer in front of it, but they were all him. Where age and fullness of face and facial hair tried to trick him, he could always line up the eyes.

 

One of the other people in the mirror had made a decision, and he, the latest sheet in the stack, was the result. He'd volunteered to be here, or at least one of him had. It was hard not to wonder how much he deviated from the palest, oldest-looking man in the back, and the man in the middle hadn't expected to be reborn so poorly when he signed up, but the teenager in front shouldn't have known that any of the others existed, let alone how they felt. Instead, he existed in a strange vacuum: no family, no connections, a big empty house, and a brain that was anything but.

 

He existed, he supposed. He could touch things, feel them, move them around. He could hurt himself (as he'd discovered when he woke up here years ago and, panicked and a few feet shorter, gashed his head open when he ran into a door handle), and he needed to eat. He aged, and he learned, and he felt, and he seemed in all ways the same as everyone else, except that no one else had trouble being seen.

 

In his first memory, he woke up as a ten year old who had not existed before that moment, and he searched the house for someone that he felt should be there. The longer he'd looked, the harder it had been to know who was he looking for, and, in a daze, he'd wandered outside. The neighbors had been mowing their lawn, and he'd yelled and shouted for them to help him find whoever he was looking for, but no one had heard him. He'd knocked on their doors and no one had answered. He'd sat in shock on the sidewalk and no one made any special effort to go around him.  Passersby commented on their clumsiness or the upkeep of the sidewalks when they tripped over him, emergency services were angry when he called. He received mail for 'Current Resident' and 'Our Friends At.'

 

Whoever he was looking for was not there, and it seemed that neither was he.

 

He was used to it now, but after those few initial weeks of amusing himself doing nothing, his other memories, the ones from his two extra faces, invaded and left their impact on everything. Nothing he did could rid him of what they brought. It left his skull feeling like a damp basement – just unpleasant enough to seep into everything it held, but not a complete disaster. However, it wasn't long before he became overrun with images of clouds and bright light, dark and sticky wooden floors, and the sounds of snapping bones. There was also a remarkably grounded underlying concern about electric bills from the reflection in the middle. He's decided then to find things to distract himself, and after he grew tried of cleaning his house over and over again, he resolved to sneak into a school.

 

It was easy. Everything about it, from just strolling through the doors with the others, to blending into nothing, to absorbing what little knowledge was new to him. Sometimes, he would pass papers forward with the rest of the class, and often, they'd be returned. He could even take tests but got no meaningful feedback beyond a big red letter. He was able to eat the food in the cafeteria and no one cried in alarm about a floating lunch tray, but no one asked to sit with him either.  He could attend field trips with or without forged permission slips, though no one spoke to him or made sure not to leave without him. He could play games as long as he was not terrible or great. He could have the illusion of fitting and being if he just made sure he didn't deviate from 'normal.'

 

He was exactly as visible, even when alone, as he would be were he part of a crowd of hundreds in a photograph.

 

And this continued for five years. Never able to make a friend, or ask a question, or help with anything, he did little but feel distantly connected to other humans through school lessons he didn't need. He found the empty music room filled his time better than re-cleaning his empty home and he taught himself, slowly, to play a piano he assumed no one ever heard. When 'his class' went to the highschool, he went with them, and he wandered the rooms and halls there during the gym and art classes that were too dependent on him really _being_ there for him to matter.

 

In the back of his mind, even years later, he was still looking for someone.

 

That tiny desire worming itself in the creases of his brain followed him to the school every day after he turned away from the faces in the mirror.

 

 

 

It was gym day according to the morning announcements, so he settled in for some extra time alone in the music rooms. It was early yet, and most students were still listening to the announcements and being counted as present for the day. As he set his bags on the floor near his favorite keyboard in the corner of the music room, he heard singing from across the hallway. The choir room was in the same corner of the school as the band room, so singing in general wasn't terribly unusual, though the choir department had officially been cut from the curriculum several years ago. Today, the singing felt unusually strong. He might have been imagining it – he was _very probably_ imagining it – but he had a feeling the song was meant him for to hear. For just a moment, he thought, he could go over and see...

 

His finger tips brushed the doorframe leading into the hallway when the singing was drowned out by a scream of frustration from the office in the music room. He turned and saw a tall kid about his age with a shock of black hair sticking up from the center of his head in a poorly cut mohawk. Skinny and pale with a liberal scattering of acne on his face, the other guy stormed out of the office where the band director sat quietly scribbling on a calendar as though he couldn't hear any of Acne-Face's outburst.

 

“I'll fucking get my own then! You'll be sorry you fucked with me!”

 

Acne-Face snorted at the door and turned on his heel to make a dramatic exit when he stopped and made eye contact.

 

He thought all the air in lungs had left him and he froze against the door frame. This had happened accidentally enough times that he didn't often put much stock in it being anything but an accidental trick of the light, but Acne-Face had stopped mid-stride and _stared_.  They blinked at each other a few times. Acne-Face looked him up and down, _was really seeing him!,_ but said nothing. Seconds unfurled between them as every sound in the room magnified – the band director's pen on his calendar, the ticking clock, the muffled echo of the morning announcements in a far off classroom, and the singing across the hall.

 

Acne-Face seemed to hear the singing at the same second. His eyes went wide suddenly and he brushed through the doorway as though someone had called his name.

 

With Acne-Face gone he clung to the door frame so tightly his hands hurt, afraid to leave this tiny space in which he'd been seen.

 

He'd been _seen_.

 

He'd been sized up, regarded with casual scorn and probably judged to be just a nerd in the way, but he'd clearly been _seen_ and Acne-Face had been just as surprised about it as he was.

 

The band director's chair squeaked in the office. Acne-Face had just sworn twice, loudly, and in the director's general direction and yet from the sound and the smell, the director was doing nothing now but rolling his chair across his office to make a pot of coffee.

 

He tossed his bag over his shoulder and dashed into the hallway. Acne-Face was no where to be seen.

 

“Hey!” His voice echoed in the hall, but no one responded. The singing in the room across the hall grew louder, and the feeling that he was meant to hear it increased.

 

He approached the door and thought about how much he'd done in order to be minimally present in the world, how much he'd tailored his own behavior just so that he might be a fragment in a crowd. What would he be like if he didn't have to?  Eyes closed, he pressed his ear to the wooden door. The sound was alien and haunting. The speakers playing the music were broken and gargled the bass like mouthwash. The voice of the person singing was unlike anyone he'd ever heard selected for a school musical. The voice was too odd for showtunes. It whined a little on its way through unintelligible words and seemed distorted and like it was struggling. It shouldn't have been appealing, and he wasn't even sure it _was,_ but he wanted to unravel his brain in order to listen to it.

 

The voice stopped and the music bubbled to an end and he felt himself drift back from the door, sliding backwards into the hallway... where something immediately slammed into him and took him to the floor with a squeak and the ugly smack of flesh.

 

When he opened his eyes, his cheek was pressed against the cold floor there was a small plush skeleton near his knee.

 

“Jesus fuck, will you walk in a straight fucking line and stop playing with that thing?”

 

A dark skinned girl wearing neon green leg warmers peeled her face from the floor and sat up on her knees beside him, shaking some dust from her small cloud of hair. She adjusted her headband and grinned up behind her. "You like it."

 

He looked up to see another girl, white as a sheet, in straight purple pig tails looming over them. She carried a scrub green lunch tray from the cafeteria down the hall and glared right through him over the top of her glasses.

 

When he looked back to Leg-Warmers, she bounced on her knees a bit and retrieved the plush skeleton. She squeezed it in his face, and it emitted a sharp squeak. “Spooky has blessed you, stranger,” she said, moving it in the shape of a cross.

 

“He can't see you, come on. This is why I don't let you carry the food.”

 

He blinked as Pigtails started to walk over him and he tried to stop them as he stumbled over his own lack of breath. “Actually, I can. See you. I can see you.”

 

They both stopped and stared down at him as he gathered himself from the floor and they remained frozen in place when he rose to his feet. Squeaky Leg-Warmers' goofy persona had vanished and she looked almost afraid. Pigtails looked as though she might be sick.

 

“Oh, god, you can really see me too,” he gasped. “Listen, please, I - I think you might be like me!”

 

“Or you might be like _us_ ,” Pigtails snapped.

 

“Okay, sure, yeah. That's fine.” He nodded enthusiastically, didn't care what she said, he'd agree to anything. His heart was racing, this was a _real_ conversation with a _real_ person, in _real_ life.

 

Leg-Warmers tried to take a step toward him but Pigtails pushed her back with her lunch tray. “Come on, we have to go.”

 

“Wait, please, you're the first person I've ever talked to and I-”

 

“We have to _go_!” Pigtails shoved Leg-Warmers down the hall and they ran through the huge double doors of the choir room. By the time he got after them and heaved the huge doors open the two girls were locked inside the choir room's office, just to the right of the double doors. He rattled the locked knob to the office door hopelessly and slapped his hand against the large glass window that made up the wall between the office the classroom area.

 

“Wait, please!”

 

The girls didn't so much as look back, and vanished through another door at the back of the old office. He strained to see inside the deeper room, but it was such a jumble of shapes and colors and the girls scrambled through so quickly that he couldn't make anything out. What he knew for certain was that they'd entered the little room that was behind the door he'd listened through in the hallway.

 

He tore back around the corner, shoes squeaking, though the double doors and out into the hall again. He pulled hard on the door in the hall, but it was locked tight.

 

“Please, listen to me! You're the only ones I-”

 

They responded by turning up the stereo.

 

“ _Take me how I am_

_'cause you know I'll never change_

_I was born to stare_

_at who stares back at me.”_

 

Just like before, he felt pulled toward it, like it was meant for him but was snaking through his brain at an alarming speed.  He maintained his grip on the doorknob even as his head fell forward and his knees shook. The words to the song garbled, and his head began to throb as he tried to scream over the music. And then something rang, or something snapped.

 

When he woke up, he heard static, and it was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon.

 

He sat up with a start, and hoisted himself to his feet with the help of the doorknob. There was no music, and no people, and he'd just been rendered unconscious for several hours by a song playing through broken speakers. He was almost too confused to be panicked. Down the hall and around the corner, though the double doors of the choir room he shuffled groggily, but the office door was still locked, and all the lights were out.

 

_What the hell had happened?_ _Was he so overwhelmed at the prospect of human contact and having it taken away that he had just checked out of life for several hours? Was this the sort of person he was when not keeping just in line with 'normal'?_

 

He dragged himself home in a fog.

 

He ate something, probably. And he cleaned something and he watched some television and he played some fragments of the song he'd heard on his keyboard and he may have started walking around his house just _looking_ before deciding to turn in. He brushed his teeth and stared through the other men in the mirror and then, for lack of anything better to do, climbed into bed.

 

Predictably, he did not sleep well. His dreams were littered with the faces in the mirror, each meeting an end that would lead to the creation of him. Sticky floor, snapping bone, half-formed requests and just barely formed solutions.

 

The next morning was auto-pilot, going through the motions of greeting the others in the mirror and tugging his way into a pair of jeans. His heart had taken up residence in his throat and made him sick at even the thought of food. He looked over his shoulder more than once, thinking someone might finally be there.

 

Walking to school took no time at all. It was only a few blocks away and his mind was racing, spinning out at even the thought of catching these people again, of finding out who had been singing, of seeing if the singer could see him too. If he could do any of that, maybe he'd even stop looking for no one in his house.

 

There was a schedule he followed on normal days, but today he abandoned it.  With the time saved by being too sick to eat breakfast, he arrived at the school 15 minutes earlier than usual and immediately headed toward the choir room. He could meet with them again, try not to scare them again, and maybe get to meet whoever had melted his brain.

 

He cupped his hands around his eyes and leaned against the glass window of the choir room office.  Now that he wasn't desperate or brain dead, it was easier to concentrate on what was inside. There hadn't been an actual choir teacher at this school in a long time, so the room was just piled with the remnants of an actual office. There were dusty cardboard boxes bursting with faded manila folders, and wires ready to accommodate a computer that had long ago been removed and gone out of date. Thumb tacks on a bulletin board still pinned tiny flakes of paper to the corners of the un-faded shadows of the notes they once held.

 

An old desk light sported recent fingerprints in the thick dust on the edge of its shade and a calendar blotter on the desk was covered in a rainbow of marker graffiti, the majority of it creative swearing and angry stick figures. “ _JC says: I'm going to kill you!,_ ” followed by a heart and a smiley face dominated the scribblings in bright red. An old VCR sat on the back shelf, flashing a blue green '12:00' from under a cloudy and yellowed plastic cover. The chair behind the desk was filled with holes that revealed its foamy stuffing and some blue smears indicated that some of the holes had been made purposefully with a ball point pen.

 

There was another door directly across the one that kept him from entering the dusty office, and that was the one that connected to the room he'd heard the singing from, and the room the girls had fled to. Since this was all still locked up tight, he reasoned, he would see them again if he just waited here.

 

He jiggled the handle of the door again. _Who are these people, what are like, could they like him? What was_ he _like?_

 

“Oh, you _are_ alive. Good job.”

 

A long black shape reflected in the glass and he turned around to see Acne-Face standing at the covered piano in the center of the front of the room. “They told me they left you in a pile on the floor in the hall. Thought I should see if the janitors took you out with the trash like the last kid. Congrats and stuff. I’d advise staying away from now on, though. He might send me after you.”

 

At first it didn't even matter what Acne-Face was _saying_. He was being spoken to! Directly! About events that had happened the day before! Here in front of him was the first person he'd ever met who had an actual memory of him and it nearly buckled his knees.

 

“Do you- do you know...?” He motioned limply to the door behind him and Acne-Face laughed.

 

“Of course. He is the world's greatest artist and I am his 'Darkness.'” Acne-Face leaned forward and bowed awkwardly. The fanfare in his mind must have been as spectacular as his eyeshadow. Acne-Face rose and walked forward, mock theatricality gone. “I mean it. You should stop now.”

 

“I-”

 

And then Acne-Face kicked the double doors open and strolled into the hallway, chain belt on his hip clinking as he went, breezing away as though he was like everyone else who couldn't see the nerdy kid with three reflections.

 

He stood against the wall, staring across the choir room, trying to just take in everything. The chairs in here were arranged in slightly chaotic levels and he imagined how it would be to sit in here with these people he'd actually spoken to. Arranging the furniture and talking, making jokes, playing music. Maybe whoever liked to sing would sing while he played...

 

There was no reason to go after Acne-Face just yet. Not until he was sure he wasn't going to meet Pigtails and Leg-Warmers again.

 

The wait wasn't long. They kicked through the doors and the sudden sound nearly burst his heart. Leg-Warmers was chatting away and Pigtails was about to retort when they both saw him.  They stopped abruptly, and each tried to hold a protective arm in front of the other.

 

“You again,” Pigtails said warily. “I see you scraped your ass off the floor.”

 

“Yeah, I- I don't know what happened. I heard that singing...”

 

“Good for you.” She clicked her teeth and glared.

 

“Please, you're the first people who can even tell I'm here. I want to talk to you, I want to meet whoever was singing earlier. I feel like it's... important. I think I might _know_ him.”

 

He did feel that way, but that didn't stop it from feeling fucking ridiculous to say out loud.

 

“He doesn't want to meet you. Just forget you heard anything.”

 

She looked at the floor and held her hand up to her friend, who hadn't said anything. Leg-Warmers, who wasn't wearing any today, let out a long slow squeak that may have actually been her plush skeleton.

 

He had to push. If the singing was for him, if he was going to find himself along with these people, he would beg. “How do you know? Let him be the judge when he meets me directly. I just want to know if I'm the same as he is – the same as you.”

 

Formerly Leg-Warmers poked Pigtails' shoulder with the squeaky skeleton. She looked sympathetic and spoke softly.  “Devi.” Squeak. “Come on.” Squeak. “You know what what he says.”

 

Devi ( _that sounded familiar?)_  frowned and clenched her fists, but released it all with a sigh. “I'll tell him to get his own food today. I won't be responsible for anything beyond that. You're on your own.”

 

She jerked her head and narrowed her eyes at he door behind him, and he stepped out of her way. She unlocked the door to the office and let herself and Formerly Leg-Warmers in.  Once inside, she made a deliberate show of locking the door behind her and glared out at him from the other side of the glass.

 

He saw his three reflections over her face.

 

The urge to _look_ was overwhelming. Look for who should have been there, look for what was missing, look for _more songs._ It was _mad_ that he wanted to hear more, see more, when the last encounter had melted him to the floor and had only been through a closed door. How would he stand up to being in the same place with whoever this was?  And yet he felt like he had to.

 

He remembered dying, so being reduced to a puddle on the floor didn't bother him as much as he suspected it should have. He remembered dying _twice_ , even. The first time, with the face furthest away, had been the worst. If he spent too much time behind that man's eyes, the world looked black and scratchy and he'd throw up. How he'd gotten the chance to be the second man, the one who had made the request that made the version of him here and now, he didn't know.

 

But the request had definitely been to come back. There was someone he wanted to help, someone he'd felt like he had _almost_ helped. He didn't know when he started looking for that person. When he first awoke at ten years old, he was probably looking for parents, and that had changed until it was just someone he'd know when he saw them, felt them, experienced them.

 

And that person singing along to a broken stereo, who could undo him into unconsciousness through a closed door? That person hiding in a locked room who knew all these people who could _see?_ If this wasn't the person he'd been looking for over his shoulder for years, then...

 

Then maybe it wouldn't matter anymore.

 

He'd have to wait until lunch to have a chance to see this person, so to keep his head, he sat with the piano. He flung the heavy cover back and poked at some of the keys. A little out of tune, but not unplayable. He played nothing at first, just the audio equivalent of doodling, and then hit a few notes that struck him so deeply they reverberated off of his ribs and he stopped to grasp at his chest and make sure his heart was still inside.

 

He didn't know where they'd come from, but now that he'd heard them, they'd left a crater. He sat for a few seconds breathing hard and fast and listening for songs from the other room, but there was nothing.  

 

This probably wasn't normal, but he had a hard time imagining his life being restrained to normal any longer.  It was not normal to be physically wounded by music, and he imagined he was probably not out of the range of normal to react to all this with fear. 

 

But fuck fear.

 

He continued playing after gingerly poking the keys to test whether they were all going to attack him, and when they didn't, his breathing slowed. Too jittery to play much that was complicated, he stayed with slow, simple, and a little sad. It wasn't meant to garner sympathy from the people hiding away in the locked office, it was just what came out.  It was also the least likely, he thought, to strike back.

 

There was laughter from inside. A real conversation was happening in there and he thought for not the first time that no one had ever laughed at anything he'd said. It was hard to imagine what it'd be like, or what he'd even say. After the laughter, a song. They weren't interested in attending classes today either, apparently. Did they do it for the same reasons he did? Why were they even here?

 

The song was lighter and airier than the first, but still slightly creepy. It didn't suit the person who had been singing before, but that did not stop him, nor the others, from singing along.

 

_“_ __When I close my eyes_ _  
__I am at the Center of the Sun_ _  
__And I cannot be hurt_ _ _  
_By anything this wicked world has done…

__Cause I hear violins..._ _ _  
___I hear violins…”_ _

  


Loud enough this time to be understood through two locked doors, though his mind still wanted either to twist itself in knots or unravel in response to the sound. A bell signaling a shift in class periods rang as he tried to understand more of the song's words through his new headache. There was nothing, just notes falling apart and the ones that had struck him earlier trying to claw their way back out of him.  
  


An hour later, there was movement behind the glass and he nearly shot from the seat in front of the piano. Acne-Face stared out at him with a cassette in his hand and a flower lei around his neck. He was bent over the desk, with the drawer open, frozen in place and staring out like an animal calculating the best move when caught in the headlights.

 

And then he walked to the door between them, and opened it.

  
  
“I see you're still here,” he said, leaning his head and shoulders out.  
  
  
“Yes.” How exciting to know he could be heard, even saying something so simple.  
  
  
Acne-Face looked around the room and spotted what he wanted – a dry erase marker apparently - under some nearby chairs. He'd have to walk away from the door to get it, and his darting glance and shifting stance would have been funny in another context.  
  
  
“What do you need?” He'd said it before he thought to say it.

  
Acne-Face nodded toward the chairs. “That marker.”  


“Sure.”  


He walked to it, picked the thing up and offered it to Acne-Face, who looked a bit like he expected to be beaten with it and drew himself back into the office with the door pulled up behind his ears. His hand shot from behind the door like a frog tongue and snatched the marker before quickly snapping back inside. It wasn't even a whole second before Acne-Face was locking the door behind him with a clatter and a flurry of frantic scratching. He stared out again, before jumping in alarm and skittering back into the song room.

 

There was no other movement until lunch time.

 

At noon, Devi and Formerly Leg-Warmers emerged from the room.

 

“Hello,” he said from the piano bench.

 

“Good luck,” Devi said quickly. She barely looked at him. “Just don't think it'll be easy. He's already gone out the other door.”  
  


Devi ducked her head down like she wanted to avoid paparazzi and shouldered her way through the double doors. Formerly Leg-Warmers hovered behind the doors for just a moment, staring at him the way Acne-Face had, before she ducked through the swinging doors too.

 

He could have vocalized “!!” at that second and ran from the room after them, into a hall full of students swarming for lunch.

 

How would he even find this guy who'd been singing? Why was he hiding? Was it easier to wait back in the choir room for him? How could he even  _know_ , he'd only ever heard his voice obscured by a solid wooden door and a broken bass speaker.

 

Just as he was contemplating attempting to body check everyone in the crowd as a crude process of elimination, he saw the other three, talking animatedly and apparently anxiously among themselves just inside the doors of the cafeteria. He tried to catch their attention as he squeezed between the rest of the student body, but they either could not or would not see him.

 

And the singer could be anyone.

 

As he looked around, he became dizzy ( _Lack of food? Proximity to these people? A song again?_ ) and the bodies and faces in the room began to blur. Those notes from before rang in long tones in his ear and he strained to keep his eyes open. Braced against the wall near a trash can, he pried one eye open and tried to scan the crowd for some identifying feature, some kind of hint that the person he needed to find was there. More people were pouring into the room and lining up along the walls for food, filling his head with buzzing, those stupid tones, words he couldn't understand from Devi and her crew, and god _what was this?_

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone _leaving_ the cafeteria through the doors at the other end of the room. Devi caught his eye. It was probably an accident. It didn't matter.  


He staggered backward through the cafeteria doors and into the hallway. It was mostly empty, though his head continued to pound like it was churning and bustling out here too. At the other end of the hall, a few students tore around the corner to fling themselves into the cafeteria, but one stood perfectly still, blinking into the light coming in from the school's front windows. Dark hair stuck out in choppy bits around the oversized headphones on his head, and his clothing was patched together like a quilt. He carried a lunch tray with three cartons of chocolate milk and a small hill of macaroni and cheese piled on top. When he turned from the windows, the music started.

 

It might have been the notes from earlier, but his heart was racing so much it was audible inside his skull and he felt as though his head would burst. He was gripping the wall and his head in equal measure as this person – it had to be the one who'd been singing – approached. Humming, someone was humming, but he didn't know if it was the singer or in his own brain.

 

Closer and he could see more. Details picked themselves out among the blur. A beige-ish skin tone with an overlay of something a bit sick. A sketchbook, a CD player in a stitched-on pocket. Thin wrists decorated with little bits of broken jewelry and string. He was where the humming was coming from, and as he got closer, the humming became singing.

 

_“ _I was born to stare__

__at who stares back at me...”_ _

  


He couldn't speak, and he could hardly move his head throbbed so badly. The song he heard being sung was sitting on top of another song made of burning notes that stung him when he focused on it, but he couldn't find where it was coming from. He picked up his head, and looked at the singer's eyes.

 

And the singer smiled, pleased at first, and then abruptly realized he was being seen, and the lyrics stopped as his eyes grew wide. His pace never faltered, but the world slowed and dragged for a second or two as he stared before it all snapped back into place . He was so familiar, the way he walked, the way he smiled, the way he moved, even the food on his tray. And was there recognition in those dark-rimmed eyes?

 

The singer broke eye contact and continued, still steadily and without breaking stride, back to the choir room. There was humming again for a moment or two and then the singing returned, but this time louder, clearer, and with his head tipped back.  
  


_He could swear it was an invitation._

  


_“ Take me how I am_  
 _‘cause you know I’ll never change_  
 _I was born to stare_  
 _At who stares back at me…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Particularly fun was keeping the original chapter's omission of our narrator's name. I pulled it off far better this time around! Since there was a good reason for it, I felt it had to stay, and it seemed like something fun to try. He's a much stronger person at the start of this than he was in 2005 and I think that helped in constructing it this way. His world also has a lot more detail, and we get to see snippets of the other's lives, including one person who didn't make it into the original first few chapters at all. 
> 
> The bits of song lyrics used here are Conjure One's "Center of the Sun", and VAST's "My TV and You", which were also the songs used in the original version of this.


	2. Help, I'm Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Names are learned, people are remembered, macaroni is smelled.

It was alarming to recognize him at all, let alone three times over.

  


He'd spent so much time just __looking_ _ in the background of everything else he was doing, because he didn't know how to conduct a real search and didn't know what good finding would do if he wouldn't be able to affect whatever he found. He hadn't known why he was looking or how he would know what was missing once he found it.  
  
And then a song turned his brain to jelly and he recognized a stranger.

  


He'd asked to come back because of this kid with the panicky eyes and homemade tshirt. His head still felt like it was cracking in half and he was certain the only reason he hadn't been sick was that he had nothing in his stomach throw up. He forced himself to stand and get to the choir room after the song, fairly certain his head was going to get worse the closer he came. Finally just knowing someone was worth whatever attacked his head.

  


A flash of light in the corner of his eye stopped him in front of a bulletin board that was housed behind a sheet of plexiglass. Three faces looked back at him from the surface, and for the first time, two of them didn't share his expression. The only face he could manage was a twisted frown thanks to the throbbing in his head, but the other two? His immediate predecessor smiled, cautiously optimistic, and the man in the back, the man with the scratchy black ink world in his mind, he was utterly blank. Even that man's eyes, which he'd always been able to connect with as his own, were obscured by the glare on his glasses. An expressionless mouth and a void for eyes...

  


He shook his head and continued down the hall, eyes locked forward and his hands framing his eye sockets to act as blinders to anything that might be reflective. At first it was a steady but slow and determined walk, thanks to his head, but in just a few steps, he was moving faster and faster, until he was running with his hands cupped around his glasses and so grateful no one could see him.

  


When he found himself in front of the choir room double doors, he stopped abruptly, his shoes squeaking against the shiny floor. The door heaved just slightly with the shifting air from the vents on the wall inside, betraying a tiny sliver of light with every outward wheeze. He put his hand on the old wood and the second he applied pressure, he heard muttered lyrics and that this could finally be real for him made the door so heavy he could hardly push it. Every concern he had about doing this combined with the strange feeling in his head and nearly paralyzed him. He held himself against the door thinking of the faces in the mirror and the expressions on the others' faces when they'd seen him, how they'd all run from him like spooked deer, how much a single song had undone him and even the mundane idea fear these people might turn out to extremely annoying once they got to know each other.

  


But they could know each other. Someone would know he existed, and he could stop looking over his shoulder. Finally, there could be people who understood, who could help him feel real, who he could ask every mundane question he'd ever wanted to ask another person.

  


The door opened with a puff of air and he leaned into the room unsure of what he'd see.

  
Just the patchwork kid, standing alone with his headphones among all the chairs, staring at the ceiling. His lunch tray sat untouched on a desk by the door to the office and he mutter-sang to himself, tuning out the world. He was familiar still, though he was missing something – or had gained something – since the last memory of him as Johnny.

  


_His name was Johnny_ . Johnny was the man with the sleep-deprived eyes, the sweet tooth, iron stomach, and the sharp touch. Cobra reflexes and a skeleton that sometimes looked like it was trying to get to the outside. Demanding and creative. Childish and intelligent. Dangerous.

  


Johnny was present at the end - his end - both times. If that was going to repeat, then this was all a fantastically stupid thing to do.

  


“Johnny?”

  


At first there was nothing, just breath, though he couldn't tell whose, and he wasn't even sure he'd been heard over the headphones. The ache in his head dulled to almost nothing along with most of the world outside the choir room. All that was left was a streak of worry, of fear. Where were the others? Were they going to stop this before it even started? Was that wiser, in the long run? They'd all looked _afraid_.

  


But __fuck fear_ _ _,_ right?

  


Johnny continued mouthing lyrics at the ceiling and then turned only his head, like an owl, and made eye contact.

  


“Help, I'm alive,” he said.

  


“I-”

  


Johnny pointed to the headphones and held one side of them away from his head, letting the song loose. Despite coming from headphones, the music felt close and clear, and briefly, it occupied the whole room. Johnny stood unblinking, silently mouthing the words:

  


_“ _I tremble,__

__they're gonna eat me alive_ _

__If I stumble_ _

__they're gonna eat me alive”_ _

  


He didn't know what to do. The song howled about hearts beating like a hammer and it was so appropriate that part of him wanted to laugh, and the other wanted to dissolve into the linoleum. Had he really expected a 'Hello'?

  


“You can see me,” he finally managed.

  


“Evidently.”

  


His throat dried up and the smell of the macaroni and cheese on the desk by the door was teasing his stomach. He swallowed and tried to make his voice work. “I heard you, and I think I know you.”

  


Johnny pulled his headphones down around his neck, but left his music playing. He said nothing, just stared. The music seemed to fade from the whole room just because he'd willed it.

  


“Goooood afternoon!” rang out from behind the choir room door, accompanied by a double bang as it was kicked open and then slammed into the wall. Acne-Face strolled in steel-toed boot first, with an armful of lunch-sized potato chip bags piled up to his forehead, and a fudge pop gripped in one hand.

  


“Fucked up a couple seventh graders in the hall today,” he announced from behind his mountain of chips. “Pretty sure they deserved it. They said some shit I don't think you would have liked.”

  


Johnny blinked slowly. “Jimmy.”

  


_Jimmy_? He knew the name, but surely... But when matched with Devi ...

  


“Also, hey, I want you to check out this shirt in a sec, I think it's kinda like your Tuesday shirt, and-”

  


_“_ __Jimmy._ _ _”_

  


“Hey, come on, I told you I thought 'Mmy' was better, because-” 'Jimmy' dumped the bags of chips on top of the piano, and then became suddenly aware that he was not alone with Johnny in the room.

  


“I’m trying to have a conversation here," Johnny said. "If you’re going to idolize me, maybe throwing a glance in my direction on occasion wouldn’t hurt.”

  


Jimmy's casual happy demeanor vanished the same way Leg-Warmer's had the other day. “Oh, we thought...” He swallowed and then tore the paper off of his fudge pop. “I'll let Devi know.”

  


Jimmy didn't have to go far. When the double doors swung closed behind him, he was immediately heard saying, “Oh, hey, um, you might not want to go in there, he-”

 

But he was completely ignored and in came Devi with her lunch tray and Leg-Warmers in close pursuit. Devi stopped short and Leg-Warmer's crashed into her shoulder, sending Devi's salad sliding from the tray and flipping onto the floor.

  


She looked at him standing there in front of Johnny like he was something she's scraped from her shoe. “Oh. Its __you_ _ again.”

  


Jimmy trailed in sheepishly, avoiding eye contact and gnawing on the corner of his fudge pop.

  


Johnny sighed and then abruptly strode off the elevated floor and toward his lunch. “Come on. Get the salad off the floor and just get in here. All of you.”

  


Devi and Jimmy exchanged glances and Leg-Warmers squeaked her skeleton.

  


“Tenna,” Devi said, “I elect __you_ _ to clean the salad. Jimmy, I elect __you_ _ to find me more lunch later.”

  


“Fuck off,” Jimmy replied, but with all the intonation of 'Sure thing'. He followed her into the office making great progress on his fudge pop.

 

Tenna pocketed her skeleton and grabbed a broom from behind the piano. There was no dustpan, she simply kicked the double doors open and flung the salad out into the hallway with one swipe, leaving an oily smear of dressing over the floor in front of the door. She then threw the broom away, letting it clatter against the chalkboard wall, and skipped into the office behind the others.

 

She turned around and stared at him, alone in the room.

 

“Come on,” she said. “You too.”

 

He stumbled after them and finally entered the dusty office. To his left the blotter covered in curses and doodles could finally be seen right side up. ' _JC says: I'm going to kill you! <3 :D_' had glitter around it that he hadn't been able to see from the other angle.

 

And 'JC' had to be Johnny.

 

The back room opened up beyond the cramped doorway to reveal a much larger room than he had imagined. The ceiling was at least twice as high as the dusty part of the office, and the light bright and inviting. Where the front office felt like a tomb, this area felt like a party.

 

Johnny hopped up onto a desk between two giant speakers and stacks of music taller than he was. CDs, cassettes, and vinyl all teetered in huge towers behind him. They spewed from filing cabinets too full to close, and climbed the walls nearly to the industrial pipes near the ceiling.

 

Devi, Jimmy and Tenna nestled into little alcoves in the canyon of music. It was clearly a second home, and possibly a first one. Worn old cushions and empty Freezie cups were strewn on the floor. There were tiny Polaroids of the room's occupants posing with baseball bats and hair dye were pinned to the wall, which was otherwise plastered with posters, drawings, and hand-written signs.

 

Against one wall was a forest green beanbag, mostly flat, but unoccupied. He backed gingerly into it, afraid to make too much noise for fear they'd realize they didn't want him here after all. It rocked slightly and he realized it was sitting on top of a small stack of boxed record players. No one had lashed out at him for sitting, however, so he let himself relax into it as much as possible.

 

“I've been trying to figure some things out for myself,” Johnny said suddenly, “but you guys have been making it more difficult. So maybe we should all talk, since you three apparently know this one already.”

 

Johnny leaned forward as though he were addressing a group of small children. The tiny buzz of his music could still be heard from the headphones around his neck.

 

“We don't!” Jimmy yelled, flinging his fudge pop stick to the floor. “I don't have any-” He looked at Devi, his eyes wide. “Do _you_ have any idea who the fuck he is?”

 

Devi frowned and looked away. Tenna shrugged and shook her head.

 

“There, _we_ don't have any idea who the fuck he is, but you go and tip him off to find Johnny? What the fuck is this?” He got up, huffing and hissing through his teeth, with his hair a disheveled disaster. The effect was something like 'bothered emo house cat.' “What have you been doing with all this following Johnny around? Who even _are_ you?” he demanded as he stepped toward the bean bag. “Who?”

 

“I-”

 

He didn't know how to answer. For all that he had three reflections in the mirror, he didn't have a name for any of them. If the mail box was to be believed, his name was 'Current Resident'.

 

“Edgar.”

 

Everyone looked at Johnny, and aside from some floating specks of dust, nothing moved.

 

Devi was the first to breathe. “Nny, do you know him? Why didn't you tell me? I thought...” She trailed off, and Johnny made no indication that he'd heard her. He sat instead tracing the wood grain on the desk with one black-polished fingernail, smiling as though maybe he'd thought to fondly nickname the desk 'Edgar' rather than identify the sick and hungry kid in the beanbag.

 

And then he looked up. “No. I don't know him.”

 

He slid from the desk and practically floated to the beanbag in one fluid motion, and although the beanbag's occupant tried to will himself to phase through the floor, Johnny leaned in close, and put them nearly nose to nose. Jimmy squeaked indignantly, though in all fairness it could have been Tenna's pocket.

 

Johnny smiled. This close up, he was a little overwhelming. His eyes were wide and predatory, and he had a kind of gold in his otherwise brown irises that was unsettling and a bit alien. His eyes were ringed with some kind of eye makeup, dirt, sleep deprivation, or all three. He was not pretty like Devi, nor cute like Tenna, nor trying too hard like Jimmy, but he commanded attention. He smelled like cherry syrup and macaroni and those scents mingled with the showtunes in his headphones and threatened to devour the beanbag and everything in it.

 

_“Sweeney wishes the world away,_   
_Sweeney's weeping for yesterday._   
_Hugging the blade, waiting the years,_   
_Hearing the music that nobody hears.”_

 

“I _don't_ know him. But he doesn't know who he is either, do you, _Edgar?_ ”

 

Was that really it? Were those syllables his name? He tried to recall writing it, using it, identifying with it, even saying it, but the memory was runny and blurred at best. He knew Johnny and Johnny knew him. Johnny thought he had a name, and could really see him. He existed.

 

“I- I guess not. How do _you_ know?”

 

Johnny stood up and looked at Devi and Jimmy, who both smiled weakly back at him. Edgar, if that was really his name, figured it was sincerely possible that they were all communicating telepathically. Johnny sighed and ducked his head under his headphones as he pulled them from his neck. He turned them over in his hands like they were an ancient artifact.

 

“I... _remember_.” He shrugged and nodded his head toward Devi and Jimmy. “Just like I remember these two.”

 

“You-”

 

But Johnny cut him off. “It's not really remembering. It's more like recognizing. But the context is shit, so I don't really know what I recognize you _from_ . I have memories of you existing before now, but not a lot _about_ you. I recall details here and there about these two, but they’re full of holes. There's black there like my brain is classified from even me. It sounds like dream bullshit, but I..." He tightened his grip on the headphones. "I know that's not what it is. I just know that we _were_ , once, maybe twice, before this, and I knew you. And them.”

 

Edgar swallowed. “Do they already know about this?”

 

Devi heaved a sigh and pulled her knees up to her chest. “Yeah.”

 

“So I'd like to ask _you_ something, Ed-gar.” Johnny played with the syllables like they were a cruel nickname or a joke.

 

He took a deep breath. “Okay, sure.”

 

Johnny hooked his headphones over his wrist and pulled his CD player out of the pocket sewn to the leg of his worn army green pants. He toyed with one of the buttons on the top like he'd toyed with Edgar's name. “Are you like them?”

 

Edgar glanced quickly around the room into the faces of Devi, Jimmy and Tenna. “Them?”

 

“Do you remember as much nothing as they do?”

 

He was prepared to say yes, but that wasn't true before Johnny asked and it was even less true immediately after. Hearing his voice, seeing him gesture, walk, and smile just enough to hide an actual sneer all sent memories rushing into Edgar's head.

 

Johnny had been there at both of his deaths. Johnny owned the sticky floor, the dead copper smells, and the artificial cherry drinks they shared after he died. Wait, no. The Freezies was another him, the second one, the Edgar that had looked optimistic when staring out from the glass over a cheerleading poster. He flinched and heard Johnny laugh.

 

It was clearer than it ever had been that Johnny was the person he'd been checking for over his shoulder all this time and that he'd _asked_ to be here to help. He'd _asked_ to have all this happen to him to try to fix everything that was broken.

 

Inside his head, there was blood, and snapping bone, and burning, and there was Johnny's bony form lying motionless in a corner. A _lot_ was broken. He didn't know what he was going to do to fix it. He didn't know what of the strange-looking kid in front of him he even  _had_ to fix.

 

He was also hearing bone snaps combined with the smell of cafeteria macaroni and cheese and found himself still hungry despite how many strikes that combination had against it.

 

“No,” Edgar coughed, “No, I remember. I wanted to meet you when I heard you in here because I think I knew you.”

 

“You remember _me?_ ” Johnny pulled his shoulders back and squeezed his hands into fists at his sides, one hand gripping his headphones.

 

“Yes. I knew your name, didn't I?”

 

Johnny twitched an eyebrow and his eyes flicked toward Devi.

 

She shook her head. “We didn't tell him.”

 

“He guessed,” Jimmy spat. “He followed us around or he heard you talking.”

 

Johnny rolled his eyes and avoided even looking at Jimmy. “Because we all know how often I say my own name.”

 

Tenna laughed. “You should show him the-!”

 

Jimmy kicked her. “Shut up!”

 

Johnny let them kick fight each other and returned focus to Edgar. “Prove it. Show me you remember.”

 

Edgar looked helplessly at his own hands. “Wha- how? Isn't me remembering you just as insane as you knowing my name? I think we're making similar claims. I mean, I'll try, but...”

 

There was a beat of silence before Johnny relaxed his posture and tapped his jaw in thought. “Okay, true. Equally crazy, I'll give you that. Still, I want to hear about you and your remembering.”

 

“Sure, of course. I'd like to hear about yours.”

 

“Good. Maybe I'll remember more of me and get rid of some of this fucked up black shit.”

 

Oh.

 

Edgar's stomach growled in hunger and twisted in nausea all over again. No, no, no, Johnny couldn't learn too much, that wouldn't fix anything. Even the few details Edgar knew were too many. If Johnny learned that snapping bone sounds were the primary sound effect in Edgar's mind when he considered one of the last times he knew Johnny, then that would probably be the last sound he heard this time around too.

 

He'd asked to do this. Johnny had agreed to this, too, hadn't he? Would it be completely mad to ask Johnny if he had three reflections? Would he remember saying he wanted to remember cherry Freezies but not … pretty much the rest of it? _Edgar_ didn't even know all of it, and _he_ didn't want to know. The previous version of Edgar had wanted to help Johnny, and present Edgar wanted people to connect to. Telling Johnny that he liked commercials seemed to work toward accomplishing both those things, so more couldn't hurt if he was careful.

 

“Yeah, maybe,” Edgar lied. “We can try.”

 

“Great.” Quicker than should have been possible in this densely packed space, Johnny whirled a chair out from behind him and stopped it with its back in front of Edgar. He reached behind him and grabbed his lunch tray, settling in with it balanced on the back of the chair and against his chest. He heaped a forkful of yellow, rubbery-looking macaroni into his mouth and gestured toward Edgar with his white plastic fork. He made a kind of 'garumph' sound that was probably 'Go on' in macaroni speak.

 

Edgar had not eaten since last night and he strained to concentrate on minutiae of past versions of Johnny when what he really wanted was to steal his very current food.

 

“This is how we bring everyone in,” Tenna said as she leaned around Devi and into proper view, swatting at Jimmy while she talked to Edgar. “New kids have to tell a story and if Johnny doesn't like it, we beat their heads in with rocks and leave them for the street cleaners.”

 

“Don't lie to the man,” Johnny said over his shoulder. A tiny piece of macaroni stuck to his lip and Edgar watched him wipe it away with the back of his hand. “I think even _he_ can tell Jimmy would never have made it in here that way.”

 

Jimmy made a face and some mocking 'Nyeh nyeeeeh' noises, then crossed his arms and slammed his shoulders back into his chair while wearing an exaggerated pout. Tenna patted his chair with her lower lip stuck out in mock sympathy.

 

“So far,” Johnny said as he gazed lovingly into his macaroni, “the only requirement to being here is that you trust me.”

 

“Oh.” Edgar nodded and swallowed. The fake cheese smell was incredible.

 

“So? Get going, tell me some shit.”

 

“Right, okay.” He licked his lips looking at the macaroni and tried to think of something other than sticky floors. “Just... this is hard, you know? It's a lot like what you have: there are holes.”

 

Johnny laughed in the back of his throat. The sound was much older than he was. He took some very dramatic stabs of his macaroni, enough that Edgar could hear the fork piercing the foam plate. The fork made it half way to Johnny's mouth before he very deftly twisted the fork around and aimed it at Edgar's face.

 

“I understand,” he said. He nodded and gave the fork a tiny shake. Edgar hesitantly took it and looked back at Johnny, unsure.

 

“Go for it, I'm done,” Johnny said when Edgar only blinked at him. He slid the tray from the back of the chair and into Edgar's lap.

 

Somewhere from the depths of his chair, Jimmy made a sound like a tea kettle.

 

Edgar didn't know when he'd ever eaten so fast, or when cheesy rubber tubes had ever tasted so good.

 

“Shit, thank you,” he said between bites.

 

“Only a truly hungry man eats cafeteria food that way,” Devi muttered.

 

“I guess he _can_ be in the club then,” Tenna said grimly. “He's passed the great food trial.”

 

Edgar nodded. “Okay, sorry.” He gulped down another mouthful. “Stuff I remember. Cherry, a lot of cherry.”

 

“Cherry?” Johnny laughed his way though the word, giving it one or two more syllables than it should have had.  

 

“Yeah, you really liked cherry stuff.” Another mouthful. “Or maybe it was just artificial red fruit punch.”

 

“Oh, come on!” Jimmy screamed from the back. “How many cups do we have in here with left over red shit in them? He's making this up as he goes!”

 

Johnny glared at him, and then at Devi, who snarled back at him.

 

“It was _cherry_ ,” Johnny said, turning back to Edgar. He propped his elbows up on the back of the chair and leaned in, eagerly awaiting the rest of Edgar's recollections.  Something hanging from a red bit of cord around his neck made a strange shape in the fabric of his shirt.

 

Edgar smiled, lips tightly closed to conceal a cheek full of macaroni. He swallowed the last bite and set the last tray aside. He didn't know where these pieces were coming from but they came so much easier now that he'd eaten that he'd be prepared to believe his memories were housed in his stomach. “Cherry then. You were always drinking those Freezies when I saw you. I'd be there and catch you watching infomercials with like three of those things, and-”

 

Johnny sat up as though he'd been struck by lightning. “I love infomercials."

 

“Yeah?”

 

In response, Johnny sprang to his feet and kicked the chair back to wherever it had come from. Edgar clenched his teeth and braced himself for a death under an avalanche of CDs. A dusty anticipation-filled silence filled the room as everyone but Johnny gazed toward the ceiling and towers of music. A few stray bits of sheet music rustled from the top of a pile and the group's eyes all followed the fluttering sheets as they floated to the floor.

 

“I _love_ infomercials,” Johnny said again, apparently oblivious.

 

The uneasy silence was broken by Jimmy murmuring, “Bullshit.”

 

Edgar looked at Devi and Tenna, who made bug-eyed 'Your move' faces at him until he looked back up at Johnny.

 

“Should I keep going, or...?”

 

“No!” Johnny's hand shot out to shush him. “No, actually. Just wait. I want to hear the rest later. I'll listen tonight. Yes.” He nodded to no one, like checking a mental box and then swung his headphones off of his arm, caught them in his hands, and popped them back on his head. He then dramatically held his hand out to Edgar.

 

Edgar hesitantly reached out, unsure of whether he was going to shake hands or be hauled from his seat. He grasped Johnny's hand slowly and the moment Johnny clasped his, he felt a burning sensation in his skin that raced along his arm, up his neck, and then snaked behind his ears. He'd never before heard music in a _sensation,_ but he was sure it was there.

 

Johnny grinned and shook Edgar's hand so enthusiastically he nearly threw it when he released it. He stepped back and gave a theatrical bow, grinning all the while.

 

“Lovely talking to you and pleased to meet you again, Edgar.  I am still Johnny C. But seeing as we seem to have shared some intimate moments before, you can call me Nny.”

 

He nodded once more to Edgar, then turned the volume on his CD player up so high it was audible to everyone, and strolled out into the choir room.

 

Edgar heard the choir doors slam, he heard and the others rush to their feet to chase after him, but he sat alone in the chair listening to feelings on his skin.

 

And his hand burned.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one came out a bit different than the original, but not too dramatically so. From what I've already written ahead, however, I think this may be the last time that happens! Edgar has far more confidence and knows less, so a lot of his responses change, and that steers a lot in other directions. There's also stuff I want to cover better this time around, and things I think are important to add. This resulted in the macaroni bit and just a lot more conversation and action from the rest of the crew. This version of the chapter also gives us a chance to really look at Johnny, which was something that really never happened the first time through SWAN at all. We all knew what he looked like, but I wanted to get it in there in text format. Johnny himself is slightly different, but this becomes more evident later.
> 
> Perhaps the biggest change is the way this chapter ends, and the musical attachments. I felt it was more important to end with the burning feeling on Edgar's skin when he first feels it than to cram in the context of the original song afterward. I also didn't like the context of the original song very much, so you'll see it in the same approximate place later, but a bit minimized. 
> 
> I also felt it was important for a song to accompany Johnny's proper introduction. His first words to Edgar are lyrics, and he'll be using a lot more during the course of this remix, as well as just having some obnoxious headphones. 
> 
> Thus, the songs in this version of SWAN 2 are:
> 
> Metric - Help, I'm Alive
> 
> and
> 
> The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, from the Sweeney Todd musical.


	3. And I Find It Kind of Funny, I Find It Kind of Sad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar gets a phone call, and a visitor.

How was he supposed to go home now? How was anything supposed to be the same now that someone had had a conversation with him?

 

When he left the choir office to find the others, the door locked behind him and where ever they were, they would not answer him. He was reluctant to leave, but if he spent the night in the school, he'd start tomorrow the same way he'd started today: hungry and sick.

 

He opened the door to his house after an uneventful walk home and dropped his bag in the doorway. Somewhere in this town, the others had houses too. They _lived_ somewhere, and might have been doing so as long as he had. There was so much now he could ask them, so much he could now ask Johnny.

 

The hours dragged even more than usual. He cleaned what was already clean, did things that were already done, and turned the television on, but saw nothing. He ate, but only out of habit. As the afternoon light faded, he wondered if he really was meant to stay at the school to talk to Johnny, or whether right now Johnny thought Edgar had blown him off and Edgar would never again talk to the only people in the world who could see him.

 

During a brief flurry of distracted cleaning, he moved his Page-A-Day Fortune Cookie calendar in order to dust the coffee table it was sitting on, but stopped mid-swipe when the page showing caught his attention. He'd found it in the basement, where he found new clothes, and dishes, and the keyboard he kept against the wall in the living room, and everything else he'd ever needed. The calendar was still on yesterday, a Thursday. The fortune for that day:

 

_Reconnect with old acquaintances._

 

_Hilarious._ He tore the sheet off to expose today's page and found:

 

_Today, your luck will change._

 

Well. That was reassuring.

 

Sometime around eight, it began to rain, and he went to the door, squinting out into the fading light for a sign of someone coming. Had he just assumed Johnny would know where he lived?

 

He caught sight of his reflection – all of them – in the window on the door.

 

“' _Edgar_ ', huh?”

 

The other reflections blinked back at him, spattered with rain.

 

“Edgar _what_ , I wonder.”

 

He snapped the latch on the door and opened it enough to reach into the mail box mounted just outside it. If he didn't get the mail often enough, it stopped coming, and he'd liked pretending that someone cared about him being there all this time, even if those people just wanted him to buy things. He could never buy anything of course, but he was guilty of looking through the shiny pages anyway. He pulled the few items in the box inside and latched the door behind him.

 

He'd never received bills for his completely functioning house, for which his past selves were extremely grateful, so what he got in the mail instead was catalogs of seasonal mail order gifts, ads for local businesses, offers for various types of insurance, and generic local coupon inserts. 

 

And, today, a small envelope covered with dirty fingerprints, no return address, and no stamp, just:

 

 

He dropped the rest of the mail on the floor and flipped the envelope open. There was a piece of notebook paper inside, with a note written in dried out marker:

 

 

 

 

And then his phone rang and he nearly hit the ceiling.

 

Heart racing, he put his hand on the receiver. Phone calls were usually telemarketers, and it was sometimes fun to freak them out by telling them that who ever they had called for had just died in a painful and bloody accident, but this time, he thought he'd see if they could sell him something. He only recently discovered he had a name, and he had no money, but it would be just like his life to get some free stuff from taking a survey at the very least.

 

A survey that would then include a guy who did not exist.

 

The phone still screamed under his hand, and he picked it up while staring at Johnny's note.

 

“Hello?”

 

There was faint music in the receiver. He was ready to dismiss it as the really low telemarketers who call and then say 'please hold', until he heard a single lyric.

 

“ _drown out the machinery in my head”_

 

“Hi,” Johnny's voice said. “It's tonight. I'm ready to listen to more now.”

 

For several bars of the song, Edgar stood frozen, note in one hand, phone in the other.

 

“Hi.” His hand burned again where Johnny had touched it. “I was just looking at my mail.”

 

“That isn't why I called you,” Johnny said, though Edgar heard him laugh and puff some air into the phone.

 

“No. No, it isn't.” He placed the note down the desk, pressing like he could make it stick. “But I'm going to ask you about that later.”

 

“Ask all you want. It's up to me whether you get an answer.”

 

“Okay.” He took one last glance at the note, then wandered around the corner to the stairs, and sat down on the bottom one with the phone pressed between his cheek and shoulder. There was no reason for generic pleasantries, they both knew why they wanted to have a conversation. “So, what else other than commercials and cherry, yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Um, well, I don't know how much this counts for, but we were friends.”

 

Johnny laughed. “Oh, really?”

 

“Yeah. Really.”

 

“So how did we meet?”

 

He looked for the memory, but it didn't exist. There was nothing about how he'd met Johnny. Either time. “I don't know.”

 

“I don't either. You think there's something there?”

 

“ _Something there_?”

 

“Yeah, like something they don't want us to see.”

 

Edgar sat up a little straighter and tried to look into his phone in his alarm. “...'They' who?”

 

He heard more tiny puffs of air and static and assumed Johnny was snickering at him again. “Next time you visit me, I think I've probably got some things to show you.”

 

“Next time I visit? Do you have somewhere to stay?”

 

More laughter. “Yeah, it's a great place. Three bedrooms.”

 

“Oh.” He reclined back on the stairs, and looked up into the second story of his house. “Me too.”

 

“Yeah, your place is really nice looking. Lucky you. Surprised you don't have a car.”

 

Edgar laughed. “I'm invisible, I can't drive a car.”

“Yeah, you can.”

 

Edgar was about to protest when he realized that maybe _he right now_ had never been behind a wheel, but his reflections had driven cars, and guided by their memories, if he sat in a car right now, he could definitely drive it.

 

“I can.” He sat up, suddenly excited. “And you can too!”

 

“Oh, but let's not get carried away now," Johnny said, dripping with sarcasm. "I'm not old enough to invisibly pilot a few tons of metal.”

 

They'd been joking but what Johnny said about his age struck Edgar. “But you – how old are you?”

 

“Fifteen.”

 

“Oh. I just turned sixteen. Or, I think I did. How do you even know?”

 

“We remember each other from other lifetimes and you want to know how I know _how old I am_?”

 

“Well, _yeah._ I just – I guess I just knew, too, but you seem to know more about all this.”

 

“You can get me a car for my birthday, Mister Fancy House. It's September first, you have some time.”

 

“Did you pick that day yourself?”

 

“Did you pick _yours_?”

 

No. He just _knew_ his birthday. What he also knew was that just listening to Johnny talk was helping him remember tiny details.

 

“...Okay, okay. Fine. But hey, hey, do you remember your car?”

 

“The one you're buying for me?”

 

“No, no, no, the one you _had_. You had a gray car, there was no paint left on it. You kept saying you were going to paint it.”

 

“...Fuck.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He was actually having a conversation with someone who was _joking_ with him already! Though maybe Johnny was this familiar with everyone this time around. Edgar was sure he hadn't been before. Before there was the grey car, no grass, some strained conversation, and black gloves. Johnny's house had been small and drafty and he remembered the layout well, though he remembered little of his own home. Maybe he'd always lived _here_?

 

“Hey, how did you find me? Did you remember this house?”

 

“I followed you home.” The response was automatic and matter of fact.

 

“You- then how did you get my phone number?”

 

“I know how to use the internet.”

 

“I'm _on the internet_?”

 

Johnny sighed. “Look, I'd counted on you being a little more easily weirded out by all this and asking better questions, so I just think you should open the door now. It's still raining.”

 

“The... door?”

 

Though the window of his front door, Edgar saw Johnny standing in the rain on the sidewalk in front of his house. His gray jeans were hacked off unevenly around his knees, and were met with a pair of long mismatched socks under some old mangled black boots. He was carrying (and dwarfed by) two large backpacks and a duffle bag, wearing his headphones around his neck again, and had a massive tangle of keys on a ring hooked onto his belt loop. Johnny waved and flipped down the cover on an old cellphone.  The phone against Edgar's ear clicked over into a dial tone.

 

“Hi!”

 

Edgar dropped the phone to the floor, kicked his discarded mail out of the way, and opened the door, baffled. Johnny strolled onto the porch and grinned.

 

Nothing made sense, and yet the first question that came to mind was,“Where did you get a cell phone?”

 

“Oh, this?” Johnny flipped the phone open again and poked a button on it. “Found it on the sidewalk one day. Belonged to some guy named Chet or something. When his relatives call, I tell them that he died and that I was the sole beneficiary of his will.” He turned the phone over in his hand and smiled at it fondly. “It gets really good when all four of his girlfriends call, the dumb fuck.”

 

“But, how are they not tracking you? Why is this even still on?"

 

Johnny just blinked at him and pocketed the phone.

 

"Sorry, do you want to come in?” While Edgar overflowed with questions, Johnny walked right by him, heaving his bags through Edgar's door without hesitation.

 

“How do you have electricity and a landline, Edgar? Don't worry about that shit, you'll hurt yourself.” He dropped his bags down beside the couch and unhooked his headphones from his neck. “What you need to worry about is vampires.”

 

Edgar stepped back into the house and closed the door behind him. “Did you say _vampires_?”

 

“Yeah, you'll apparently just invite any old weirdo into your house.” Johnny stood in the center of the living room with his hands on his hips, surveying the room. “And frankly, you are not well-defended from any of the undead in here.”

 

“I'll... make a note of that.” He crouched to the floor to gather up the mail and hang up his old phone, craning his neck to try to see Johnny just around the corner at the same time.

 

“'Your luck will change,' huh?”

 

Johnny held the calendar in his hand and inspected it like it was a complicated piece of machinery when Edgar joined him in the living room.

 

“Yeah, sounds pretty good, right?”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow and set the calendar down like he'd just discovered it was covered in slime and didn't want to get it on his clothes. “If you say so.”

 

“What? What's wrong with it?”

 

“It's ambiguous, it's some Oracle of Delphi shit. It says your luck will _change_ , not that it will get better. Your house could burn down tonight. That's still change.” He flexed his fingers like they were covered in something sticky and wiped his hands on his jeans, setting off a clatter of keys.

 

Edgar motioned toward Johnny's hip. “What is all that?”

 

“Oh, yeah. Hang on.”

 

Johnny thrust his hands into his pockets and came back up with a tiny pair of scissors, a paper clip chain, several crumpled bits of paper, a glittery blue hair clip, two sticks of gum, a ball point pen cap, and a pocket knife. He dropped everything but the knife onto Edgar's coffee table, and then tried his back pockets.

 

“Here we go!” He produced a small key and then pulled his shirt up away from the massive keyring, where Edgar could see it was not just clipped onto Johnny's beltloop, but padlocked. Johnny fussed with the lock for few seconds and then the whole ring slammed to the floor.

 

Johnny scooped the ring up and dropped himself into the ugly old pink armchair in the corner. He held the ring out to Edgar. “Just my keys.”

 

They weighed more than Edgar thought they would. It was mystery how they didn't tear Johnny's jeans right off. Enormous skeleton keys were threaded directly onto the loop, and smaller ones attached with secondary key rings. They were a complete tangle of every shape and size and very few were labeled at all, let alone with something intelligible.

 

“What is- What am I looking at?” Edgar flipped through them, twisted things around, but had no idea if he'd seen everything.

 

Johnny held out his hand and Edgar passed the mass of keys back to him. He flipped through them quickly and with clear purpose and then selected a particular key.

 

“This one unlocks the choir room office.”

 

He selected another one.

 

“This one is for the nurse's office.”

 

And another.

 

“This is the auditorium.”

 

He pulled them up one after the other. School's main doors, the gym, the computer lab, the cash registers in the cafeteria.

 

Edgar shook his head, mouth open. “How did you get these?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “A guy who lives across the street from the school gave them to me. Maybe a year and a half ago? I saw him just standing on his porch one day and he was staring at me while I walked by. Out of nowhere, he asked for my name, and whether I had a key to the school. I told him my name because I guess I was a dumb fuck a year ago.  When I told him I didn't have anything,  he unhooked this whole ring from like five other ones he was wearing and just threw it on the sidewalk in front of me. When I picked them up, he'd gone back inside. I thought it was bullshit, but I tried some and they work.”

 

“You didn't go talk to him?”

 

“No, he made my head feel like it was full of bees. But these have been useful. Have an extra house key?”

 

“I...do?”

 

Johnny laughed and whirled the keys around, singling out a fairly average looking bronze key. “Here, if this makes you feel better, this is Devi's. And this,” he spun the keys again and pinched a shiny silver one between his thumb and forefinger, “is Jimmy. I've got space for an Edgar. I can put you in next to Devi's asshole neighbor.”

 

“Why do you have her neighbor's key, asshole or not?”

 

The keys swung back and forth on Johnny's outstretched finger and he grinned at Edgar fully reclined into the chair. “Well?”

 

_Your luck will change._

 

What was going to change anything for Edgar but Johnny? And what was Johnny going to do without Edgar, if anything that Edgar remembered about having to help him was right?

 

“Just a second, I'll go get it.”

 

The key was taped to the underside of the desk in what was probably supposed to be a dining room, though he never dined there. He'd always felt a little mocked that he had duplicate copies of a house key, or even one at all. It wasn't as though people were hurrying to break into a house filled with no one, and, until right now, he'd never had anyone to give a spare to.  

 

With the key in hand, he considered that this might not be the safest thing to do, and then he saw Johnny's note sitting on top of the desk.

 

He returned with the key and held it out like he was offering up a vein. “Here, take it before I start thinking clearly.”

 

Johnny snatched the key immediately. “Ha, I win!” He clipped it to the ring with the others and gave the whole thing a spin. It would take Edgar hours to find it now if he ever had second thoughts. “I promise I won't steal all your stuff in the middle of the night. I can also be _fairly_ sure I won't blow your house up.”

 

“At least I have that. Speaking of, how do you find your own house key in there?”

 

“I don't have a house key.”

 

“You have some random asshole's key, but not --” Edgar sighed and started again. “You just said outside that you had a three bedroom home.”

 

“I have a _home,_ it's just not the same thing as a house.” Johnny leaned forward in the recliner and dropped the keys in his lap. “Be careful, those aren't interchangeable.”

 

“Then, you...”

 

“The choir room.”

 

He suddenly felt significantly less regret about handing over the key. Here Edgar was, provided with everything he could ever need and several things he didn't by unknown forces in his basement, and Johnny lived in an old school.

 

Before he knew what he was doing, Edgar grabbed Johnny's key ring from his lap. Johnny seized up and actually hissed, but Edgar persisted. He cupped the whole mess in his hands and shook it, filling the room with metallic rattle.

 

“I don't know where it is in here, but you commit the damn key to memory and use it whenever you need it, okay? Middle of the night for food is fine. Whenever you want to, you can use it. You're welcome here.”

 

Johnny stared, wide-eyed and full of distrust. It was the same wild animal stare the whole group had given him at some point or another during the last two days.   While Johnny and his friends weren't  _feral_ , they were certainly wary of new people.  Finally, though, Johnny at least relaxed enough to pick up his arm and slowly take the keys from Edgar's hands.

 

He looked at the keys as though checking them over for injuries, and then slid Edgar's key away from the others and inspected it closely.

 

“You know, you're the only one who gave a key to me when I asked.” The key glinted in the light from the lamp next to the chair and Johnny turned it over and over, flicking his thumbnail on its teeth. “I couldn't wrestle one off of Devi, and she bitched and moaned about it before Tenna got tired of hearing about it and stole it for me. And Jimmy wouldn't stop trying to shove his in my bags or my pockets.”

 

Edgar didn't know what to say, but it turned out Johnny wasn't interested in much more introspective backstory. He dropped the keys again, stretched his arms to the ceiling, and then folded his hands behind his head and crossed his legs, the picture of comfort.

 

“Anyway, I'm taking you up on your offer for the weekend, because they're using my _luxurious foyer_ through Monday to get ready for a cheerleading fundraiser.”

 

His first house guest, ever. Part of him wanted to object and pretend to be offended like people on television just for the novelty of being able to say disparaging things about someone who invites themselves over, but it was a very small part.

 

“Okay.”

 

Johnny looked him up and down with a sort of amused confusion and then laughed. He rocked forward in the chair and sprang to his feet, giant ring of keys in one hand. He reached into his pocket and began reattaching the ring to his belt loop with the tiny key. “So, you're going to tell me more stuff, right?”

 

“Yeah, though it would really help if you answered some things for me too.”

 

“I suppose I could manage.” Johnny re-pocketed his key and went back to the coffee table to retrieve the rest of the random junk he'd pulled from them. “Give me what you know, I'll give you the same back, we'll see if we end up with one fully functioning human by the end of it.”

 

Edgar nodded and took a seat on the arm of his couch, immediately wondering what he should censor. He knew that he'd asked to be here, and he knew that Johnny had agreed as long as it would be without memory of anything horrible. And while Edgar's memories of what Johnny had actually _done_ were a little hazy, he knew enough not to be surprised at all that Johnny reported having so many holes.

 

“I remember knowing you more than once,” Edgar said as he watched Johnny begin to poke at every feature of his living room. “But there's not a lot back at the first time. I don't think I knew you long, or even well.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I kind of knew your face was attached to two other people. But the first guy, yeah, I don't really remember him either. Most of that first guy is blacked out. Most of the first _me_ is blacked out.” He picked up Edgar's remote control, tossed it in the air and caught it, before throwing it back down on the couch cushions. “I had a rabbit once, and I remember a lot of dumb shit like food and laughing at people walking into mailboxes, but it is black as fuck that far back.”

 

“After that, I don't know how we met, but I definitely knew you better.”

 

“Right, right.” Johnny dropped to his knees, key ring clattering on his hip, and scanned under the sofa. “All the Freezies and watching TV stuff. I remember that too.”

 

Edgar leaned forward, trying to get a decent look at what Johnny was hoping to do on the floor. “I remember Devi and Jimmy's names, too, but I don't know if I ever met them.”

 

“I don't think you did.” Johnny stood up and clicked a floor lamp off and on several times. “Devi didn't like me despite my best efforts, and I didn't like Jimmy despite his. But they don't know that.” He paused in front of Edgar's television to consider. “Well, no. I think Jimmy is probably just smart enough to have figured that out, but he doesn't _remember it._ ”

 

“I asked to be here,” Edgar said suddenly. It surprised even him. “I asked to go around again to help you.”

 

Johnny stopped his investigation of the cabinet under Edgar's television and turned around. “Help _me_ ? Help me with _what_? And who did you ask?”

 

“I don't know, help you be happy or something?” He shook is head and kicked the corner of the coffee table. “But you said you'd do it if you didn't remember anything awful, so...”

 

“What kind of 'awful' are we talking here?”

 

“I don't know. I don't remember that either.” This was a bit of a lie, but it felt safer to omit sticky floors and blood. He knew Johnny hadn't been a good man, and now he increasingly wondered whether that description applied to the version of himself that had chosen to associate with him.

 

“But I was right about there being someone outside controlling what's in my head.”

 

Edgar curled his toes. “I guess so, yeah. Which probably means me too.”

 

Johnny nudged the cabinet closed with the toe of his deteriorating black boots. The soles were peeling from the rest of the boot where Johnny's toes flexed, and they were laced with long bits of fraying dirty white ribbon. The rest of Johnny's things (and Edgar suspected they really _were_ most of Johnny's possessions) were sitting in a pile on the floor next to Edgar, and everything appeared to be in a similar state.

 

“Do you really have three bedrooms in here?”

 

Edgar looked up from the bright red thread keeping one of the bags together. “Yes.”

 

With that, Johnny walked by Edgar and scaled the stairs two at a time.

 

“Whoa, whoa, wait a second!” Edgar jumped from the arm of the couch and slid a little on the hardwood floor in his socks. From the bottom of the stairs, he watched Johnny take a right and vanish into Edgar's bedroom. He climbed up after Johnny and found him standing just inside the door. He was dumming his fingers over his mouth in deep thought.

 

“Is this your room?” Johnny didn't bother turning around.

 

“Yes.”

 

Johnny shook his head and walked around the bed. He ran his hand over the comforter and then dropped to the floor, flipping the blankets up on top of the bed to get a look underneath.

 

Tossing the blankets up on top of the bed on his side and crouching to the floor, Edgar looked across the empty space under his bed at Johnny.

 

“Um, excuse me?”

 

“Edgar,” Johnny said gravely, “this place is fucking spotless. You are not having nearly enough fun in here.”

 

There was a noisy shuffle of skin and keys on wood and Johnny's boots scuffed across the floor into view. Edgar sat up. Johnny sat on the floor on the other side of the bed and scrutinized Edgar with narrowed eyes. ' _Uncomfortable_ ' didn't quite cover Edgar's feelings.

 

Johnny's expression fell slowly from intense concentration to curious interest and he leaned across the mattress, almost whispering, “Do you hear anything?”

 

“No? Do you?”

 

“No.”

 

“What are you-?”

 

And then Johnny climbed across the bed, dirty boots and all, and left the room. “Come on. We're going to have some fun.”

 

And Johnny's keys clinked and clattered as his boots thumped on each step.

 

 

 

Edgar found Johnny not far from the steps, standing in front of Edgar's keyboard. The fingers of his left hand reverently traced the raised buttons scattered across the top. His other hand touched the keys just enough so that when he stroked the whole row, they fluttered, but made no sound. Finally he chose a single key, paused over it for a second or two, and then pressed and held the note for several seconds. He released he key, and when the tone faded, he turned to Edgar, who was still standing on the bottom stair.

 

“Edgar, do you play?”

 

“Yes. I go to the music room when -”

 

“Can you play something for me?”

 

If it were possible to overdose on new experiences, Edgar felt sure he would have done it already today, and now here was someone asking him to play for them. He stepped down from the stair and took a seat in front of the keyboard.

 

“I can try. What do you... what are you doing?”

 

Johnny hauled open one of the bags he'd dragged to the side of the couch. After dumping a shirt, a water bottle, and three paperback books onto the floor, he shook the bag and six or seven CD cases clattered to the floor. He flipped through them quickly, and then found what he'd been after and threw the others back at the bag. CD in one hand, he reached over the pile of bags for where he'd dropped his player and headphones and then brought everything back to Edgar.

 

The player flipped open and Johnny popped out the CD already inside and tossed it across the living room like a frisbee. It bounced off the pink chair and went skidding across the floor.

 

“Whoa, shouldn't you be careful with those? What if you scratch it?”

 

Johnny clicked the new CD into place and closed the player. “Are you kidding? We use those as _plates_. We have digital versions of everything and I have blank discs by the hundreds in the office. Now here, take these.”

 

He held out his massive headphones and Edgar put them on without argument or hesitation, but he braced himself for something to hurt.

 

Instead, after some beeps and the soft whir of the CD spinning to life, he heard a slow, melancholy piano melody and felt himself light up.

 

“Oh, I know this!”

 

Johnny smirked. “Of course you do. Can you do it?”

 

“Yeah, I think so.”

 

He pulled the headphones off and handed them to Johnny, who hovered so close to the keyboard he was nearly wrapped around it.

 

It was slow at first. He had to find the song while Johnny hummed it, and he had a new fear that he'd hit the notes that had struck him so violently in the choir room.

 

But then he very suddenly had the song and it had him and then it was like he'd been playing it all his life. Johnny beamed from beside the keyboard and stopped humming in order to sing along.

 

_“And I find it kinda funny_  
_I find it kinda sad_  
_The dreams in which I'm dying_  
_Are the best I've ever had”_

 

Edgar hadn't doubted it before, but now he knew for sure that Johnny had been the one he'd heard singing. He sounded better this way than behind a closed door and under a garbled bass line. The sound was as strange as Johnny was, and very honest. Johnny was not shy, and as Edgar had learned, he never considered whether he was bothering or imposing upon anyone else. He was singing with Edgar's notes, but it was not a performance, it was very obviously just Johnny doing what he did. The more Edgar heard, the more he sincerely enjoyed Johnny's voice rather than finding it some kind of curiosity. He'd never shared something with someone else before and was having trouble holding onto the notes just from sheer excitement. No matter how excited he was to be playing with a real person, though, he was concerned that what happened the first time he'd listened to Johnny would happen again.

 

Edgar looked away from the keys and his thoughts and saw Johnny still singing, but staring at him with narrowed eyes just like he had upstairs. Johnny frowned and shook his head after half a verse, and it was enough to be distracting and throw Edgar off.

 

“You're losing it,” Johnny said, abruptly dropping the singing.

 

“I know, I know, sorry, you were just-”

 

“It's okay. You're good.” He smiled not at Edgar, but at the keyboard. “Will you try another one?”

 

“If you want. Though, I'm a little worried about what happened before.”

 

Johnny's eyes opened wide for a moment. “Oh, right. I think I can help with that, but it depends.”

 

“On...?”

 

He leaned in front of Edgar and fluttered his fingers above the keys, searching, and then hit precisely the combination of notes that had struck Edgar in the choir room. Edgar flinched, the air left his lungs, and he felt the notes burrowing into his chest. Rushing from his hand and flashing up around his ears, just for a second, he felt the trail of the burn left over shaking Johnny's hand.

 

“Edgar, how do you feel about getting noticed?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have always liked that final line of Johnny's. Because Edgar is a different person now, his reaction to it will be different, and that in turn causes the new SWAN 4 to go completely (and wisely) elsewhere, but it's still a good spot to end. Good job, younger me! 
> 
> There's a new obvious parallel to the beginning of ISH happening here for people who have read that and the original SWAN already. I have a lot of luxury knowing what's going to happen in the whole story, I can make little calls back and forward now! A lot of Johnny's looks and staring are him trying to work out a plot point that originally came much later in SWAN, so I can direct his strangeness with some purpose now! 
> 
> Johnny's note is written with a font I made from a slightly embellished version of my handwriting a few years ago, which is why it's images here. 
> 
> The original SWAN 2 song was moved here, and its context changed just slightly. The single line that made me use that song originally is the one that's present here.
> 
> I very nearly removed Mad World entirely, but as I thought about it, that it's sort of a cliche 'deep person' song, I liked that both Johnny and Edgar would know it, so I left it. That, and I don't want to take songs from SWAN, only add. 
> 
> Johnny and Edgar are able to give each other some really basic information this time, which I remember keeping intentionally vague the first time I wrote this. In my mind, it was to let people come up with their own details, but it just wasn't done well enough and is actually not the best idea ever, so now you get some concrete shit about them. We know how old they are, which we never got before, and we know when Johnny's birthday is. We also know now that they could both, if needed, drive. We will continue to find out more. Edgar knows a lot less at this point than he did in the original, and Johnny knows a little more than he did originally, so they're actually really working together on figuring out their weird shit and I really enjoy the idea of that.
> 
> I gave Johnny's keyring more presence this time around. The ring and the sound it must make when he moves are my current favorite things about Johnny, along with the image of him frowning at Edgar for not having enough fun from under the bed. 
> 
> The songs are: 
> 
> Conjure One - Sleep (Johnny's phone call, originally SWAN 2's song)  
> Gary Jules - Mad World (from the keyboard, originally SWAN 3's only song)


	4. Irgendwie (Belarus)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny shows Edgar some music.

“What did you do to me?”

 

Johnny looked at him, through him, around him, like he was some rare new species pinned under glass.

 

“Don't you hear anything?”

 

Edgar heard his lungs' heaving and the rush of blood behind his ears. “Like _what_? What did you do?”

 

“I heard you play those notes before, and I thought you'd have heard...” Johnny's hand moved toward the keys again and Edgar instinctively grabbed his wrist to stop him. The burning sensation from their first meeting returned almost instantly and Johnny's face contorted into a snarl as he hissed and tore his hand away. He glared threateningly at Edgar, eyes wide and lip twitching as though he were prepared to bare some fangs, but the expression faded slightly when he and Edgar made eye contact.

 

Johnny stood just watching him, waiting for a move. He kept the hand Edgar had grabbed drawn back, fingers curled but rigid, and the other hand hovering near his pocket. Edgar stared back, his own fingers twisted into his shirt over the spot where the notes had lodged themselves in him.

 

He _definitely_ knew Johnny. He knew _this_ . He knew the Johnny who was prepared for violence at the slightest touch, who imposed what he wanted on the rest of the world and damn the consequences because there _were none._

 

Maybe this Johnny was still young, maybe he'd given Edgar his lunch and joked with him on the phone, and maybe he'd just been prowling under Edgar's bed like a cat, but he still carried a knife.

 

Thankfully, Edgar also knew what Johnny would need to hear. “I'm sorry,” he said. “You still don't like to be touched without permission, do you?”

 

“No.” Johnny relaxed and rubbed his wrist where Edgar had touched him. The mass of strings and overstretched bracelets he wore twisted and pulled at his skin as he rubbed and it made Edgar itch just looking at them. “You remember that?”

 

“I won't forget again. Promise.” He slid over on the bench to put some more distance between them, like reassuring an animal. “It just hurt, whatever you did, and I didn't want you to do it again.”

 

“I wasn't- I didn't know.”

 

“What _did_ you do? What was that? And the bit about getting noticed?”

 

Johnny's eyes still looked a bit haunted, but he was making a very obvious attempt to calm himself and smiled. “I'll show you. Do you have a stereo in here somewhere?”

 

He did, though now that he considered it, it was rarely used. Edgar picked his hand up slowly and cautiously to avoid alarming Johnny further, and pointed into the dining room. Johnny turned and became visibly calmer and less feral looking at the sight of it.

 

“Do you speak German?”

 

“Um, no?”

 

“Good. Turn that on for me? I'm gonna get some stuff.”

 

Johnny went back to his pile of bags and Edgar walked across the room to turn on his stereo, though he kept checking over his shoulder to make sure Johnny wasn't pulling out his knife.

 

It wasn't a knife, it was a bag that was almost entirely CDs.  Johnny heaved it into the dining room and onto the table next to Edgar. He pulled out CDs by the stack and began lining them up with some sort of purpose, apparently sorting as he went.

 

“Here.” He thrust one of the cases in Edgar's face. “Put this one in. It's number four.”

 

Edgar pressed some buttons on the stereo and stood with the disc on his finger. “This... isn't going to hurt, is it?”

 

“Baby.”  Johnny didn't look up, just continued pulling stacks of CDs from the bag. “It might hurt for a few minutes, but then it'll go away, and then it won't happen anymore.”

 

Edgar hesitated to inflict more pain music on himself and looked apprehensively between the CD and Johnny. “Please tell me what this is.”

 

“Just put it in.”

 

Edgar dropped the CD in, closed the top, and bit his lip as he selected track four.

 

The song's opening played and Edgar experienced nothing at all unusual.

 

“Do you know this song?” Johnny asked, finally turning away from the bag.

 

Edgar listened, and couldn't even understand it. “No.”

 

“Yes, you do.”

 

“No, I don't, I just told you I don't know German, and-”

 

“Doesn't matter. You know this song. Just listen to it.”

 

Edgar looked beseechingly at the speakers playing an unfamiliar dance tune in a language he didn't speak, but nothing felt familiar.  He wouldn't even have known this was German if he hadn't been told.

 

“I've never heard it before.”

 

“That doesn't mean you don't know it.” The tension in Johnny from earlier was gone. Now he was perched on his knees on one of Edgar's dining room chairs, chin hooked over the back of it, grinning like a Cheshire cat with a delightful secret.

 

“I-”

 

Johnny mouthed along, eyebrows high, trying to prompt something.

 

Edgar tried to guess at the object of this game. “Do _you_ know German?”

 

Johnny grinned and shook his head. “Not a word.”

 

“Then-”

 

And then Johnny sang along with the chorus.

 

“ _Gib mir die Hand, ich bau dir ein Schloss aus Sand_

_Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann_

_Die Zeit ist reif, far ein bisschen Zartlichkeit_

_Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann”_

 

It wasn't a muddle through or a rough blabber singing of a foreign tongue. Johnny knew every word, every syllable, and sung them as casually as he did English. Johnny did the next verse too, staring into Edgar as he sang every word.

 

“ _Im Sturz durch Zeit und Raum_

_Erwacht aus einem Traum_

_Nur ein kurzer Augenblick_

_Dann kehrt die Nacht zurück”_

 

This wasn't memorization, it was like Edgar could see and hear every tiny nuance of the pronunciation that he didn't even know he knew about. He would have believed fake German if Johnny tried to speak it a minute ago, he knew he would, and yet here he appreciated how well it was being sung.

 

And then, he found himself struck with the idea that it was odd to hear Johnny singing sentiments like this and an aching panic began to flood his head. _How did he know what it said when he still didn't understand the words? Why did he know the next notes, the way the key was going to change, everything? Where was this coming from? Was Johnny doing something?_ Wincing, he hissed through his teeth as the pain increased with every note.

 

_How was this suddenly all in his head?_

 

“It's okay, you have to stop panicking.” Johnny spoke calmly stayed on the chair, still tucked against its back.

 

Edgar felt himself trying to hide from the song outside himself as much as in, trying to pull himself into a ball. He braced himself with a hand on the wall as words and thoughts that were not his scrolled through his head. “What _is_ it?”

 

“You have to stop fighting it, that's making it worse! Just listen to it!”

 

“But I don't-”

 

“ _Listen!_ ”

 

He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was one of his other reflections, that he wasn't here, that he could just float out above some big sea and watch things float and rise and sink and be. Where he could hear – _did hear!_ \- words he understood and a tune he knew as though he'd heard the song every day. The pain lessened or else he was so far from it that it no longer mattered. When he opened his eyes, Johnny was grinning at him with the same prompting, expectant expression.

 

Edgar's heart pounded and his mind raced. _“_ Oh my god _, I know this song.”_

 

Johnny practically bounced in his seat and sang the last chorus, and Edgar, though he was not the type, sang the last words with him. He knew every word, and every nuance, and it was among the most terrifying and exciting things that had ever happened to him.

 

“ _Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann”_

 

The song ended and he trembled inside.  With the song over, everything was gone. He could have mangled his way through 'Gesundheit' if Johnny had sneezed at that moment, but it would be nothing like what had happened while that song was playing.

 

Johnny reached up and and the stereo peeped as he dropped in another disc.

 

Edgar watched him with a kind of euphoric detachment. “What was that?”

 

“ _Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann_.”

 

“No, I mean, what just happened? How did I do that?”

 

“It's a bit too early for me to make these kinds of demands on you,” Johnny said, poking the track selector, “but just trust me.”

 

The stereo clicked and hummed. Edgar's heart felt like it was trying to leave his body.

 

Johnny folded his arms on the back of the chair. “Do you know this song?”

 

It was new, again. A man sang, but his words were slurred and the quality of his voice was strange. Edgar was certain, once again, that he'd never heard it before.

 

“I-”

 

“Careful.”

 

The song looped around him once or twice and then it rang against something in his head and he had a kind of anticipation for it that can only come from having heard it once before and knowing that 'the good part' is later.

 

“I … I do.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Edgar nodded, and felt the lyrics sitting in his head. He looked at Johnny and halfway through the chorus, recited the words along with man singing them.

 

“ _... my old mistakes should send her_

_eternity for us to try_

_the dawn will tell us if we fly”_

 

Johnny very happily sang the following 'lalala lai' part and Edgar was not sure whether to be delighted or petrified.

 

“How did I do this? I just watched you singing the other one, and then...”

 

“I think it's a little different for everyone. You caught on quick, though.”

 

“Thanks, I think.”

 

“Here,” Johnny said when the song ended. “Pick one.” He held out a stack of CD cases like a fan of cards. Edgar slid one from his hands and opened it. Three people looked back at him from behind the sheen on the disc.

 

He loaded the disc and selected a random track.

 

An industrial-sounding instrumental began creeping from the speakers.

 

“Niiice,” Johnny said from the chair. “So?”

 

“I'm going to know this too, aren't I?”

 

“Let's see if you can get it before the vocals kick in. There's a long intro, you can get it.”

 

“I don't – how is this happening?” Edgar put his hand to his head and swayed on his feet. “I think I need to sit down.”

 

Johnny said nothing, but reached behind him and swung another chair around. Edgar fell into it, closed his eyes, and let the inside of his skull expand to hold the song. It slipped in as though it'd been poured into a glass.

 

“ _Enveloped in a sentiment  
_ _  
_ _A sound that rushes over me  
_ _  
_ _Engage an impulse to pretend  
_ _  
_ _I have a faith that's pure”_

 

“I know this song.”

 

Johnny laughed beside him, his shoulders shaking as he clung to his chair.

 

Edgar shook his head, dumbfounded that every sound filling the room was simultaneously new and intimately familiar. “Is it all of them?”

 

“Let's find out.”

 

The song continued playing while Johnny grabbed random discs from the piles on the table, sending some cases sliding off the table and cascading onto the floor. He began popping them out of their cases in rapid succession, threading each one onto his finger until he had a stack of eight or ten of them.

 

_“And what will happen?_   
  
_Will I dream?_   
  
_I am too scared to close my eyes”_

 

Johnny jumped to his feet, stopped the song abruptly, and began cramming the stereo full of new CDs while Edgar sat back in a quiet alarmed anticipation.

 

“Ready?”

 

“Probably.”

 

He pressed a few buttons as the stereo loaded each disc. “I'm putting it on totally random so I don't know what's coming either. Here we go.”

 

The stereo buzzed, clicked, and whirred, and then the display rocketed through a series of numbers before settling into a song.

 

It began with drops of sound and before they'd all finished falling, Edgar knew how many more would be coming.

 

“Do you know this song?”

 

_“Another night, another fight, I'm always right,_   
  
_don't you know just do as I tell you so everything's fine_   
  
_The spirit is gone_   
  
_The feeling of love I don't remember”_

 

“Yes!”

 

Johnny grinned and sang the next verse with so much enthusiasm, Edgar joined him.

 

_“How about shutting up, slowing down_   
  
_and eating something, your sugars low, it's getting hot_   
  
_The reason is you, forever in you_   
  
_I won't surrender”_

 

It was hard to believe the person he was now deliriously screaming ' _shut up_ ' lyrics at routinely hid in the choir room, and led a small pack of other terrified feral animal friends. He was fun, entertaining and lively, if a bit unpredictable.  It seemed that this Johnny and the one who needed to carry the knife – the one Edgar remembered – were two different people.   Maybe the others were like this too?

 

“ _I pray for a moment when we’re down and break  
_ _  
_ _There is more  
_ _  
_ _But your furious touch, it means too much  
_ _  
_ _I will surrender”_  


 

Johnny hit the 'next' button before the song ended.

 

“Do you know this one?”

 

The song only had to ping three times and Edgar knew it.  All of it.  Every rapid blubbery line, every halted sound.

 

“Yes. I do. Holy shit. What is going on?”

 

Johnny shifted his weight to the song, back and forth, in time with the plinking background. Edgar watched him mouth the words to the first verse, eyebrows high, lower lip caught in his teeth. Whatever this was, Johnny loved it.

 

“It's everywhere,” he said. “They just exist. There's a big churning mass of songs – all the songs, ever - and you can access all of it.”

 

“Why have I never been able to before?”

 

_“You understand_   
  
_Mechanical hands_   
  
_Are the ruler of everything (ahh!)_   
  
_Ruler of everything (ahh!)_   
  
_I'm the ruler of everything_   
  
_In the end”_

 

“You didn't look.”

 

“I would never have _thought_ to. I've never heard anyone mention anything like this.”

 

Johnny smiled as though Edgar were a child.

 

“That's kind of the fuck of it,” Johnny said. “We don't know if everyone else takes this for granted, or if it's only us who can do it. There aren't a lot of television dramas about blinking or breathing, and I'm pretty sure everyone does that.”

 

“This is the fish not writing about the water around it kind of thing?”

 

Johnny's grin grew. “Yeah, just like that.”

 

“Is it everything, really? Do I really know every song you have there?”

 

“And some I don't. Although,” and here there was an unsettling glint in his eye, “there are some you can't know this way.”

 

Edgar leaned in with his elbows on his knees. “What kind?”

 

Johnny sang with the song instead of answering.

 

“ _Do you like how I walk?  
_ _  
_ _Do you like how I talk?  
_ _  
_ _Do you like how my face  
_ __  
Disintegrates into chalk?”

 

_  
_He hit the button to skip to the next one, and in the blank space between tracks, asked, “Do you hear anything?”

 

“No?”

 

“I'm not really surprised, given that it's me in here. But we'll give you some time and then stick you in a room with Jimmy.”

 

Edgar inhaled and sat rigid against the seat back.  “I'm not sure I like the sound of that.”

 

Johnny cackled into the opening of the next song. “You learn quickly, Edgar. I like you.”

 

He couldn't help but smile. This was the first time anyone had ever said that to him. “Thanks.”

 

“You ready for a few more of these? We're going to find one you want to sing with me the whole way through.”

 

“I'm not really much of a singer.”

 

Johnny tsk'd. “You should never let that stop you. Do you know this song?”

 

Edgar laughed as all the right words and all the right notes settled neatly into place in his head. “Yes.”

 

Johnny made am expectant face, clearly waiting for Edgar to sing.

 

“No, no.”

 

“You were just doing it!”

 

“But now you want me to!”

 

“We're going to keep looking until we find one. I have all weekend.”

 

And, Edgar supposed, he did too. Johnny flipped through the songs quickly, asking every time, “Do you know this one?”, “How about this?”, “This one?” and there was such euphoria in the entire experience, even if Johnny expected him to sing. Someone was with him, someone liked him, someone was sharing something with him, someone laughed when he talked, hell, someone _expected something of him_.

 

The songs were so varied. Johnny's taste seemed to be literally anything and Edgar wondered if he didn't like the songs so much as as he liked that he had some kind of power to bring them to his head. Some of them, however, he clearly loved. If the song was especially obnoxious, or particularly industrial or creepy, Johnny reacted with such extra bounce and obvious childlike enthusiasm that Edgar briefly considered that he'd found the wrong person.   Had the Johnny he remembered ever reacted to something with evident  _glee_? 

 

Johnny continued to ruthlessly reject songs as Edgar refused to sing them until Edgar hesitated in denying his willingness to sing a song about how much he loved what he assumed to be a European country.  Johnny was very much ready to proclaim musical love for the place, and in fact stopped his relentless rejection of anything Edgar wouldn't sing to play with the song for himself.  Not surprising in the slightest was that Johnny liked to inject a bit of personality and drama into singing along to strangely specifically patriotic dance music.

 

The way Johnny moved normally was a bit theatrical, so when he was _trying_ to do it, it was especially so. His hands moved in broad motions, with his fingers flicking like spider legs. His eyes and expressions changed too, like there was another person in there who could twist an entire audience to do what he wanted if only they could see him. He sang in the chair for most of it, swinging his leg and thus rattling his keys to the bass beat, but even seated he just floated through the song. The notes elongated and the song began building to a dramatic end, and that was when Johnny became especially insistent that Edgar should join in. He leaned close in his chair and stared into Edgar's eyes with such purpose that it was comical. And since Edgar now knew the song, he knew what was coming before Johnny screamed at him.

 

“ _I love Belarus!”_

 

Edgar started laughing and trying to look away, but Johnny leaned closer, yelled louder.

 

“ _I love Belarus!”_

 

He'd never laughed this hard. No one had ever been trying to _make_ him laugh.

 

_“You will always be the one, I can't get enough!”_

 

And then Edgar couldn't resist it anymore and screamed through his laughter right along with him,

 

““ _I love Belarus!””_

 

Johnny absolutely cackled.

 

“ _Got it deep inside!_

_I love Belarus!_

_Feel it in my mind!_

_And I wanna see the sun_

_shining from above_

_and I'm gonna everyday_

_give you all my love!_

 

_I love Belarus!”_

 

Johnny stepped away and tried to talk through laughing. “I fucking – I fucking _knew_ it. I knew you would do it.”

 

Edgar threw his arms up. “I don't even know where Belarus _is_!”

 

The next song started and half a second in, Johnny bit his lip, trying to hold in a new strain of laughter. “Fuck it,” he said, shoulders shaking, keys rattling.

 

Edgar tried to cover his mouth, and his stomach ached. “Oh, my god, are you kidding me.”

 

“ _Oh, fuck it!_

_I'm gonna have a party!”_

 

“Every word this time, Edgar.”

 

Edgar shook his head. “No arguments, yes. Yes.”

 

Three days ago, Edgar did not know anyone in the entire world. Today, he had someone to scream “Oh, fuck it!” with, _and_ someone he could have a two person party with.

 

“ _Oh, fuck it!_

_I'm gonna have a party!_

 

_I had the blankest year_

_I saw life turn into a TV show_

_It was totally weird!_

_The person I knew_

_I didn't really know.”_

 

 

There was, Edgar discovered, a remarkable feeling of connectedness when you both know the words and one of you was so completely unafraid of looking like an idiot that it was contagious. Johnny led him so easily that it would have been alarming if it hadn't been fun. One gesture and Edgar knew what ridiculous thing to do, where to be, how close to get.  He had definitely never danced before, but Johnny appeared made for it, or at least extremely comfortable. If Edgar was honest, he wasn't even sure if this was dancing so much as aggressive choreography with furniture, but he'd take it. He'd never had a reason to scale chairs or spin in circles before, but he certainly was doing it now.

 

When the song ended, they each had one foot on the table and another on a chair and were inches from each others' noses.

 

Edgar's chest was heaving as his body struggled to choose between laughing and inhaling. He leaned forward, trying to catch his breath by bracing himself on his knee.

 

The next thing he heard was Johnny's voice muffled by a crack, quickly followed by some ugly thuds, the clatter of at least seventy five cd cases, and Johnny's keys.

 

For a moment, he couldn't breathe and was just surprised to find himself on the floor. Then most of him hurt, and he heard Johnny.

 

“Mother _fuck._ ”

 

Edgar coughed and untangled his leg from the chair. He wasn't bleeding, but he felt a bit woozy. “Shit, are you okay?”

 

Johnny held his head in one hand, eyes closed. “I don't know, are any of my bones sticking out?”

 

“No. You look okay.”

 

“They're going to think you beat me while I was here.” He shook his head and looked around to take in what had happened. He looked personally offended by the chair under his knees as he kicked it out of the way and pulled himself to his feet using the toppled table as support.

 

There was a tiny tear in the shoulder seam of Johnny's shirt now, and while he didn't seem to notice it, Edgar felt immediately guilty. “Sorry.”

 

“Well, we've all learned that you are heavier than me or at least shouldn't go leaning on tables.” He bent to pick up a CD and winced. “Fuck.”

 

“Can I help you with those?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Remarkably, it didn't look as though any CDs had been broken, so they were easy to collect, and the table was also still in one piece and easy to flip back over. Edgar stepped back and surveyed the dining room: covered in CDs and the bits of one broken chair, a song he could choose to know playing loudly in the background, and a guy who had only been here an hour or so checking for impressions of keys in his hip.

 

“That was fun.”

 

“I _told you_ you weren't having enough.” Johnny twisted his keyring around and rubbed his hip, wincing slightly.

 

Edgar laughed just enough to keep it contained in his throat and stepped around Johnny to turn off the stereo. His butt ached, he was probably going to have some really ugly bruises, and he'd broken a chair, but he absolutely delighted about all of it.

 

He watched Johnny herding the CDs back into piles when it struck him that Johnny's things were still sitting on the floor in the other room.

 

“Hey, do you want to put your stuff upstairs? I wasn't kidding about the three bedrooms.” And then, after a quick pause, he added hastily. “Unless you wanted the couch!”

 

“Doesn't matter,” Johnny said, shrugging. “I sleep on chairs and desks and the cot in the nurse's office, so a couch is looking pretty good already.”

 

“There's an actual bed up there. Come on, I'll help you carry all the stuff, if you want.”

 

Johnny looked between Edgar and his pile of bags several times before nodding in agreement. “Yeah, okay.”

 

 

 

 

The bags were heavier than Johnny had made them look; Edgar actually had to expend some effort hauling them up the stairs. He called to Johnny behind him on their way up.

 

“Hey, can I ask you a question?”

 

“Severed heads.”

 

“Um?”

 

“Oh, sorry, weren't you going to ask me what was in these?”

 

“Uh, not specifically, no.”

 

“Oh, okay. Ask away.”

 

They rounded the corner to the left at the top of the stairs and Edgar led the way to the bedroom tucked in at the end of the hallway. Johnny stopped short in front of the room just to the left of the stairs and stared uncomfortably at the door.  Edgar didn't know whether he was supposed to say anything, so he stood silently until Johnny looked away from the door and followed Edgar into the room at the end of the hall.  It seemed best not to question it.

 

“I just wanted to know how you got things at all.”

 

“Thrift stores can't miss what they never receive. Raiding donation bags is pretty easy.”

 

“Oh. And you find enough?”

 

They dropped the bags on the floor, though Edgar did so far more gently.

 

“Eh, sometimes you get creative and you make enough.” Johnny dropped to his knee and unzipped one of the bags to pull out a few shirts and handed them up to Edgar. “See?”

 

Each shirt looked like it had been sewn together from a minimum of two other shirts, though one looked like it was at least six different bits of fabric.

 

“Sometimes the kids' clothes have funny shit on them, so we just cut off the designs and sew them onto something that fits.” He tugged at the stitching on a shirt still partly in the bag. “We put Jimmy in a bunch of rainbow stars from this pink shirt once. I think he actually liked how he looked in magenta and he wasn't going to find that in a bigger size.”

 

“You gave him a girls' shirt?”

 

Johnny scrunched up his nose a little. “Eh, it was Jimmy's shirt, so it wasn't a girls' shirt, it was Jimmy's.”

 

“Oh. Okay.”

 

A brief silence hovered between them while Johnny stared up at him, narrowing his eyes again, apparently looking for something that was not coming.  Edgar twisted his fingers in the shirts a little and just as he was about to try some other answer, Johnny blinked. 

 

“It's weird, isn't it?”

 

“Which part exactly?” Edgar offered the shirts back, and Johnny shoved them into his bag.

 

“Knowing each other already.” Johnny began another inspection of this space the same way he'd done the living room. “I feel like I already know what to expect of you.”

 

Edgar couldn't say he knew what to expect of Johnny exactly, but the sentiment was true enough.  “Yeah, it's... surreal. I didn't know anyone at all a few days ago, and now you have me singing and lending you a bedroom.”

 

“It's how all my people survive,” Johnny said, flipping over a snow globe that Edgar didn't remember having. “Gain your trust through music and planted memories and then I'll lay some eggs in your head tonight while you sleep.”

 

“I'd rather you not.”

 

Johnny snickered during his inspection of the mostly empty bookcase. “Okay. But just because you asked nicely.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I giggled through making this whole thing. 
> 
> So, this is quite a bit different from the original SWAN 4, and I like it much better! I wanted to get Johnny talking about music early on, so now ideas that were presented super late (SWAN 16 or something?) originally, are getting some footing early on like this. They'll keep talking about it later too. This was also a really good opportunity to let Johnny and Edgar have some actual visible fun together, AND for me to have some fun with songs! Everyone wins!
> 
> Johnny and Edgar really enjoying each other's company and not being super serious all the time is really important to me this time around. I've been letting Johnny be more lively and animated in my drawings of these two, and I wanted that to be reflected here too. There was a lot in the original that I was too embarrassed to do because it was my first fanfic and it was *Johnny*, which people tend to have Opinions on. 
> 
> But this time I said 'fuck it' so hard that I put in a song with that as a lyric directly following a Eurovision song. 
> 
> Johnny had a big outburst in the original, but it was mostly forced because I had wanted people to know I still knew that the original canon Johnny was super unstable. He has a reaction here that makes more sense for the story, and for him, and for just everything, and consequently feels less ridiculous, so I'm in. Less ridiculous, I say, putting in a song about Belarus. 
> 
> People who've read SWAN before will notice I stole the song from SWAN 5 for this chapter, and the reason for this is that I pretty much got rid of SWAN 5, but more on that next time, maybe.
> 
> For now, these are the songs now associated with this chapter in order: 
> 
> Nena - Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann (the original SWAN 4 used the half-English version of this song)  
> Mumiy Troll - Lady Alpine Blue (the strange-voiced man song, a Eurovision song)  
> VNV Nation - Legion (Janus) (SWAN 5's original song)  
> Passionworks - Surrender (more Eurovision)  
> Tally Hall - Ruler of Everything (this song was given to me by my beta for ISH :) )  
> Anastasiya Vinnikova - I Love Belarus (Eurovision again. I regret nothing. I love Belarus.)  
> Nada Surf - Blankest Year


	5. Little Things of Venom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny vs. Edgar's house.

 

If he were on TV, Johnny supposed, he'd be jealous of all this.

 

Edgar had an entire house to himself. He didn't need to clear out when it would be too hard to haunt a fundraiser, and he didn't make meals in the home economics lab or (presumably) wrestle them from random hapless delivery people. There were meals here whenever Edgar wanted, and they seemed just as free as the meals Johnny had to get creative to obtain.

 

It would definitely be tempting, while eating Skettios at midnight in front of a real television and knowing Edgar could do it every day, to be more than a little envious.

 

He could pity Edgar if he were on TV too. Johnny's TV self would frown and earnestly spew bullshit about how lonely Edgar's life had been and how everything is better with companions, no matter what your situation. But fuck companions. Edgar had video games in here, and Johnny had a baseball bat and Jimmy's rib cage.

 

And Edgar had definitely been lonely, that was obvious. Edgar couldn't hear everything, and so far, couldn't be heard, but still, Johnny couldn't find it in himself to pity him any more than envy him. Edgar had access to memories of who Johnny had once been that even Johnny didn't have. Edgar was a curiosity. He was useful.

 

And Johnny needed to find out how useful.

 

Johnny had woken up this morning in a torn and lumpy old chair in his choir room office. Now Edgar had loaned him a bedroom and sang with him and Johnny almost wanted to drop the search for things to fill his own brain with. For a few hours this evening, he'd even seriously thought he might. Edgar had not only never let himself _hear,_ he'd also never pretended the floor was lava, he'd never torn things just to say he'd made a mark on them, and he'd never modified his clothing. There was a certain satisfaction in knowing that Edgar would not have done any of it without Johnny. That no matter what happened after this, for Edgar, those things would always have Johnny's mark on them first.

 

But here on the couch in Edgar's newly trashed living room, there was still a deafening silence rippling from the black spaces in Johnny's head, and he had to go forward.

 

“So,” Johnny said casually, hooking loop after loop of pasta onto his fork.

 

Edgar looked up from his bowl. “So what?”

 

“So I've been trying to figure you out, and I don't think I understand why you were looking for me, or what you're doing here now that you've found me.”

 

Edgar turned his bowl around in his hands. He laughed, but it was quiet and a little bitter. “What, you weren't looking for me?”

 

“I wasn't looking for _anyone,_ if that makes you feel better.”

 

“It's okay, I was joking.”

 

“If you say so.”

 

Edgar sighed, his shoulders shifted, and he just barely twitched his eyebrows. Not joking _that_ much. He was already _so_ easy to read, and with some time, he would only get easier.

 

“I wish it were something interesting, like dreaming about you or something, but it was just that ever since I can remember, I've felt an overwhelming sense that _someone_ should be here with me.”

 

“And you think that's me.” The pasta in Johnny's bowl suddenly became a little too overwhelming, a little too orange, a little too strong, and he set the bowl down on the coffee table in front of couch. He pulled his legs to his chest and draped his arms over his knees. The ceiling fan shook its attached light bulb just enough that the light subtly vibrated and danced on his black nails and the beads looped around his wrists.

 

“We remember each other, don't we?” Edgar took almost humorously small bites of his Skettios.

 

“But you said 'someone' was missing, not specifically me.”

 

“I know. It was just that I knew you when I saw you. Or, heard you, I guess. I just knew you were him.”

 

Johnny narrowed his eyes, tried to see right into him. “So, were you looking for him, or looking for me?”

 

Edgar looked lost. “...both? I remember asking to be allowed to try to make sure he was happy, and-”

 

“That guy is dead, in case that detail has evaded your attention. Finding me doesn't do anything to him.”

 

Edgar bit his lip. “I remember being three of me, I thought you did too.”

 

“Yeah, it's that, but it's like the FBI swiss cheese version. I'm probably a classified alien tube baby.”

 

 _That helped._ Edgar smiled at him and looked a little less miserable. “I just mean that they all sort of feel _present._ I think I've seen them reacting to things I do.”

 

This, this, this was something he could follow, something he could cling to, something he could take apart and study. “ _Seen_?”

 

Easily moved by even the tiniest prompt, even while clearly hesitating, Edgar began explaining. “I was wondering when I should mention this. I don't know whether any of you are the same, but when I see myself in a mirror, I see the other two, too.”

 

Squinting at Edgar did nothing to reveal either deception or the extra selves. “Devi and Jimmy haven't said anything to me about it.”

 

Edgar was very obviously disappointed. “You don't have the same thing?”

 

As much as he wanted to say he did, it wasn't beneficial to lie to Edgar. Yet. “No.”

 

“Could you... do me a favor?”

 

Johnny reclined back into the couch cushions. “I suppose.”

 

“Could you look with me? I really want to know if anyone else can see them.”

 

Johnny nodded.

 

“Thanks. Come on, if you don't mind, I'd really like to just do this now.”

 

Edgar got up from the couch and motioned for Johnny to follow him upstairs.

 

There were pieces of framed art on the walls surrounding the stair case, but they were so generic, just like every piece of furniture, and most of Edgar's clothes. Like the house was meant to be in a catalog and just _look_ like a house.

 

The bathroom was small and it was difficult to maneuver two people in the space without someone catching a hip on the corner of the sink or falling into the bathtub, but they fit. Johnny stood to the side while Edgar stared into the mirror on his own. He exhaled and closed his eyes. A tiny muscle in his throat twitched, and Johnny caught him before he spoke.

 

“Ready for me?”

 

“Yeah, come look.”

 

Edgar moved half a step back to let Johnny in front of his shoulder.

 

Three faces stared back at him.

 

“Holy shit!”

 

Johnny recoiled from the mirror immediately, twisting fingers both around the cord on his neck and Edgar's shoulder. He nearly toppled over the toilet and out the window but held onto Edgar and kept himself upright.

 

He hadn't expected Edgar to be lying about three reflections but that didn't lessen the shock of seeing them.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah, that's just...” Johnny steadied his breathing and released Edgar's shirt. “That's surreal as fuck.” He put his hand up and the two other Edgar's hovered still in the reflection, a transparent overlay on Johnny's hand. Definitely no one behind them. There was only cold glass when Johnny touched the mirror, and the others did not flinch or react. Mostly, they copied Edgar exactly, though the extras had some physical differences.

 

“I've always been able to see them,” Edgar said. “In anything reflective.”

 

“Do they ever do anything?”

 

Edgar bit his lip. “That one,” he pointed to the healthier of the two extras, “he's the one right before me. He smiled at me the other day right after I saw you in the hallway. He's the one who asked for me to be here.”

 

“And the other one?”

 

“He's been getting a bit blank lately.”

 

“What's 'lately'?”

 

“Since I met you, I guess.”

 

“I see.” Johnny reached up to touch the glass again. The 'blank' man almost hurt to look at and Johnny felt certain there was something _missing._ He traced a line from above the man's eye, through his nose, and down to his jaw. “This guy... he isn't finished.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I don't know. I can just... feel it. I know him, I think, but something's wrong with this face.”

 

Edgar frowned, and the others followed suit. Johnny jerked his hand away from the glass.

 

“Are you sure it isn't the beard?”

 

Johnny laughed. He doubted Edgar had relieved the tension on purpose, but if he had, Johnny had not been giving him nearly enough credit. Edgar was remarkably well-adjusted for spending most of his years without real interaction. “No, that's not the problem. That looks good on you, though, you should try it.”

 

Edgar raised his hand to touch his chin and the others followed him like puppets.

 

“Really?”

 

“I've got better shit to lie about than hypothetical facial hair.”

 

“I'll... think about it.”

 

“Good." Johnny tapped the glass on the wrong man's face. "The problem is just that this is not how I'd remember him if I could remember _enough_.”

 

“What _do_ you remember about him? You said it wasn't much, but what is there?”

 

This was a frustrating question, his brain was frustrating, this whole _thing_ was frustrating. Johnny could go to where those memories were stored, he could try to call them up, but he was stopped every time by painful black static. The more he pressed, the harder it fought him. Last year, he'd tried to remember so hard that his brain had just shut him down and he'd woken up two days later in Jimmy's trailer in the funeral home parking lot, surrounded by candles, incense, and a pile of CDs and medical text books.

 

“I had a conversation with him,” Johnny said bitterly. “Or whoever I was did, I don't know.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The quiet staring from the three in the mirror was interrupted when a tinny version of 'Ride of Valkyries' erupted from the phone in Johnny's pocket. Edgar blinked at him, and Johnny caught the other two do the same out of the corner of his eye as he retrieved the phone.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hey, are you okay?”

 

Jimmy.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I called Devi and she said she hadn't heard from you since this afternoon. Where are you, what are you doing?”

 

“At this very moment? Standing with Edgar in his bathroom.”

 

Jimmy was silent for several seconds. The resentment on the other end nearly seeped through the phone's earpiece.

 

“Why?”

 

“We're trying something.”

 

“Oh my God!” Jimmy screamed loud enough to startle Edgar and Johnny pulled the phone from his ear.

 

“Not like that! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

 

“What do you mean?! You-!”

 

“It's after midnight, Jimmy, go to bed!”

 

“But-!”

 

“Good _night_ , Jimmy!”

 

Johnny clicked the phone closed and looked up at Edgar, who was staring at the phone, baffled.

 

“Wh-”

 

“Please consider the hour and how badly you really need the answer to that question before you ask.”

 

Edgar frowned and looked back into the mirror. “Yeah. I'll ask you tomorrow. I think I should get to bed too. It's been kind of a long day.”

 

Johnny backed out of the bathroom and stood in the hall at the top of the stairs to let Edgar out and give him access to his room.

 

“I'll see you in the morning, Nny.”

 

“Okay, Three-Face.”

 

Edgar laughed and closed the door behind him.

 

With that closed door, Johnny was now free to find out what kind of a person Edgar was without his interference.

 

Immediately, he went to the unused bedroom that had bothered him when Edgar first led him up here. This house in general seemed so unlike a place that was owned by one teenager. It wasn't Edgar in these rooms, filling these walls, making these choices. So, Johnny was going to find out who _was_ here.

 

The room was dusty, which was a real surprise considering Edgar's apparent addiction to cleaning things everywhere else in the house. Even Johnny's borrowed room had been spotless. In here, however, there was thick dust sitting on most surfaces.

 

Johnny wrenched the desk drawers open all the way and they screeched and moaned as wood scraped against wood. They were filled with papers, generic office supplies, a phone book, and some batteries but nothing with any significance or personality.

 

There was a bed against the opposite wall, but there was nothing underneath it but some cobwebs and dust bunnies.

 

The last thing to investigate was the shelf above the desk. The books were all plainly bound and largely generic and bland titles, like someone had needed to construct the least offensive spread of literature possible for some kind of ad or photoshoot. A dictionary, an old volume of an encyclopedia, a cookbook, a volume of National Geographic's Best Photos, some little bargain paperback versions of Shakespeare, some Greek mythology from Ovid, and, somewhat ominously, a copy of 'Paradise Lost.'

 

And one book, with no writing on its spine, and no image on its black cover. Its pages were coated in more dust than anything else in the room. Johnny grasped the thick yellowing pages and began flipping from the back, but most of the pages were empty. Maybe it was a journal?

 

A third of the way from the front of the book, there was suddenly some typed information, but it just seemed like a list of random items. He flipped to the front and a few pages in found no title, no introduction, just:

 

 

 

 

 

The words hit him, crawled under his skin, and then sunk into his stomach like rocks.

 

“What the fuck...?”

 

He flipped through the next pages frantically, and after three pages of nothing but pages of solid black ink, an incredible array of miscellaneous shit spewed forth on the pages. The book listed everything in Edgar's house, from every piece of furniture to the number of bananas currently in his kitchen. Rugs and chairs and the stereo and Kool-Aid and the sheer volume of it was nauseating. Johnny braced himself palms flat against the desk and stared into the words, heart racing.

 

There was a small painting of a horse on the wall in this room. Johnny pushed himself away from the desk and tore the painting down, wrenching the wire fastener from the back. He flipped through the book, scanning until he found it listed:

 

 

 

Good. Definitely the same painting.

 

He tossed the painting on the bed and went to work trying to pry open the latch on the window that sat just beyond the foot of the bed. It was rusted and old, so it was difficult to move, but Johnny was determined, and soon, one red and aching palm later, the latched scraped open. He strained a little pushing the window up, but it eventually gave and he leaned outside into a rush of fresh but slightly chilly air. There was no screen on the window, though it was about to be summer.

 

Edgar's neighbors were only ten or twelve feet from the side of his house, and on a slightly lower elevation that was just barely illuminated by the moon and a few late night street lamps. Perfect.

 

Johnny returned to the desk, grabbed the offending book in one hand, and then walked back to the window to take the painting with the other. Leaning outside once again, window sill pressing uncomfortably into his hips, he hurled the horse painting over the gap between the houses and watched it land on the roof of the neighbor's porch.

 

Inside the book, the entry for the painting faded out like an ink spill in reverse. Johnny nearly dropped the book into the grass below.

 

Back inside the room, his head was spinning looking at the words and realizing they could all react in real time. He sat back against the foot of the bed and flipped page after page of detailed description of everything in the house.

 

Absent-mindedly, he wound the cord on his neck around his fingers, looking at page after page of Edgar's clothes, dishes, books, and decorative trinket bullshit, when it hit Johnny to look for his own things.

 

He had to be one of the last things added to the house. Assuming it was chronological, he flipped the pages so quickly he nearly tore them. On the last page of writing, among the hundred or so CDs he'd brought, his entire wardrobe, and the junk in his pockets, he found himself.

 

 

He felt his throat go dry as he slid his fingers down the cord on his neck and rubbed the key at its end with his thumb. Even this book knew it was Something. It didn't go to any locks Johnny could find in the school, but he felt the tiniest sting when he held it, and he was sure he hadn't imagined its curious reaction to him speaking his own name. The day he realized something was important about it, he'd removed it from the key ring and tied it to his neck so he could keep an eye on it. As some extra insurance, he kept the keyring with him at all times, and locked it to his clothing when possible.  He hadn't been aware that his things were keeping an eye on him too, though he could have guessed...

 

The creepy key guy had to be this book's 'Pepito.'

 

And Edgar had a last name.

 

This book had to be from the people who were keeping memories from him. These had to be the people Edgar asked. Edgar had said some bullshit about making Johnny happy, and for some reason that necessitated a book cataloging how many boxes of cereal he had and whether or not his tacky décor was being thrown from windows.

 

But the book said it would update, and Johnny very clearly saw that it would, instantly. Edgar also had everything in the world provided for him here.

 

_So where is it coming from? And how much of this does Edgar know?_

 

He slammed the book closed, squeezed it so tight his knuckles went white and his thumbnails nearly pierced the leathery cover. Anger boiled in him and the static that usually kept itself to the blacked out portions of his mind fogged over everything. It pounded to get out and Johnny suddenly felt as though he had no control. His fingers ached and yet they kept trying to sink themselves into the book, and his chest felt so constricted he could hardly breathe.  He wanted desperately to stop, to run, and yet his body seized up without his control.

 

No noise in his head to drown this out. He wasn't lucky like the others. Why hadn't he brought headphones for this little journey?

 

He slid down the side of the bed and onto the floor and hit one of the bruises he'd acquired when Edgar tipped over the table. That was enough to release whatever had taken hold and Johnny threw the book into a corner, gasping for breath. He crawled to his feet and backed out of the room before closing the door and dashing to his new room for his headphones and a random CD.

 

Headphones tucked snugly around his neck and under his jaw, Johnny crept downstairs. He tried to restrain most of his keys to muffle the sound, but didn't dare take them off.

 

He'd been in nearly every inch of Edgar's living room, and his dining room had nothing in it but a table, a pair of chairs (one now broken), and a desk. The note he'd left Edgar in his mailbox still sat on the desk next to a telephone. Connected to the dining room was the dimly lit kitchen, small and strangely organized with a tiny stove hiding behind a massive fridge. A short window was situated above the sink, and the light in here was nothing but a fading exposed light bulb. There was a very old telephone on the wall, the kind with a earpiece to unhook and a receiver mounted into a wooden box.

 

Right next to this strange old relic was a small alcove with two doors. The one to Johnny's right led to Edgar's back porch and a large yard. The other to the left, they hadn't entered. It was thick with too much white paint coating every inch of it but for its tiny black handle. Like nearly everything else in the house, it stuck and resisted when Johnny tugged, but eventually gave way with a groan.

 

A basement. A long flight of crooked and cracking wooden stairs led down too far for him to see in this light. He opened his tiny phone and used what little light it provided to descend the stairs, which creaked no matter how lightly he tried to step.

 

At the bottom, he was confronted almost immediately with a washer and dryer.

 

_Good. If this friend thing works out, I don't have to do laundry with Jimmy ever again._

 

Just above him, a weak and tattered old string dangled which let him shed some slightly brighter light on the room. It was dim, yellowed, and faded, but it was better than a tiny cell phone.

 

On his right, the room was mostly empty. The washer and dryer sat there next to some supplies for winter, and there was a crude shower in the corner.

 

But to the left, it looked like his office at the school.

 

Boxes were piled everywhere. Neat, clean, cardboard boxes without a single mark but the date and their contents. _Clothes – May 7_ _th_ _. Dishes – August 15_ _th_ _. Food – February 23_ _rd_ _._ All from last year.

 

A song swirled up from his headphones, and his heartbeat began to mimic it.

 

“ _Out on the scene today_  
_Blasted in every way_  
_Got you caught on the other side_  
_Some things you just cant hide”_

 

The box closest to the stairs was still sealed. He crouched down beside it and traded his cell phone for his knife, slicing the box open with a quick cut down the center. He rotated the box and saw the date. Yesterday.

 

_“Feel the poison of change in me_  
_All that I'll ever be, comes back_  
_Crushing on into me_  
_Here it comes again”_

 

Inside was nothing he could assign a single label to. There were clothes and CDs and snack foods. Thread, tiny ear buds, paint, and a sketchbook.

 

“ _Has it spotted you? Oh, no_ _  
__Have they got you too? Oh, no”_

 

The clothes were much too small for Edgar, but after unfurling one pair of dark jeans, Johnny knew immediately that they'd fit him. There were at least three outfits worth of clothing that was never going to fit Edgar, but would sit as though it had been perfectly tailored for Johnny's bony frame.

 

“ _Has it spotted you? Oh, no  
Have they got you too? Oh, no”_

 

At the bottom of the box was a pair of boots. Sturdy, thick, real leather with proper strong laces and the soles firmly attached.

_"With every step it takes  
Something inside me breaks”_

 

“Fuck.”

 

He ran his hand through his hair and just tried to think. It was easy to think to blame Edgar, but there was no way Edgar could think to do this. It had to come from the people with the book.

 

_“ Hang myself by a rope of words  
Whether or not it hurts”_

 

If Edgar asked to make Johnny happy, these people were... catering to it. Cataloging it. And they somehow thought that a single box of stuff would do it?

 

Yesterday. Edgar might very well have known this was here.

 

Edgar had a book that followed him and everything else in his house. He had a basement that generated so much stuff just for him that it was now expanding to Johnny. And he'd apparently asked someone, an entire lifetime ago, to make Johnny happy.

 

 _“ _One of my feelings took a ride today__ __  
_ _ __Into a black box and it came out gray”_ _

 

If someone had told him two days ago that he'd be simultaneously annoyed by, excited by, and terrified of the contents of a box, he'd have hit them with something and laughed in their face.

 

_“ _Has it spotted you? Oh, no  
Have they got you too? Oh, no__

__Has it spotted you? Oh, no”_ _

 

 

He'd let Edgar sleep for now. But Johnny would be waiting in the morning when he woke up.

 

_"We’re heading for a fall_  
_Set your mind at ease_  
_Won’t you save us from…"_

 

In the meantime, he thought, he might wear the boots.

 

 __"…_ _ _These little things?_ __"_ _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's funny, this chapter was the start of a lot of surgery in the background, changing POVs and gutting whole chapters and moving stuff around, but it looks a lot like what we had the original SWAN, just moved back a chapter. I thought I'd have a lot of talk about here, but it's just sort of random notes.
> 
> As mentioned last time, I pretty much just dumped everything that was in the original SWAN 5, mostly because it wasn't really going anywhere or doing anything and I was pretty sure I could convey most of what was in there in other ways. I also did some condensing here in the same way that I did Johnny's phone call, so there aren't two trips while Edgar is sleeping. 
> 
>  
> 
> I love the image of Johnny chucking an ugly painting out the window, that's one of my favorite parts of this, along with Edgar and Johnny in front of the mirror.
> 
> The phone call is from Jimmy this time instead of no one. The original phone conversation served to launch into a conversation about Jimmy and his thing for Johnny, and it just made more sense to show this being clearly a thing with it being Jimmy on the phone in the first place. I also wanted you to get a sense of how much time this group spent together that Jimmy was calling and worried after not seeing Johnny just for an evening.
> 
> This chapter ends earlier than the original (SWAN 6 at this point, I guess), but I think it also ends better.
> 
> The song is the original SWAN 6 song
> 
> Arid - Little Things Of Venom
> 
> used in the same approximate place, even!


	6. Error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny and Edgar deal with Edgar's supernatural house and attempt to cope.

The box wasn't that hard to haul up the stairs, though Johnny grew angry with it once he reached the top and left the whole thing in the middle of the kitchen. The boots were a perfect fit, and didn't even feel like they needed to be broken in. Maybe it was a dumb thing to do take the stuff, but if it was meant to be bait, Johnny was fine with that if it meant meeting whoever had set the trap. The key on his neck had already marked him as someone to watch just as closely as Edgar's supply of bread according to these people, so he might as well make himself a better target.

  


What would this house be like without these people interfering? Would Edgar be more visible in his surroundings if they hadn't been filling his house like a bland IKEA catalog? What was Edgar really like? Certainly the keyboard was Edgar, and the fortune cookie calendar had appealed to him, however ridiculous it was, but that wasn't a lot to go on.

  


Johnny spent the night at the top of the stairs, watching the sky through the window there in the hall. He kept his headphones close, to keep the silence at bay. There had always been a comforting sort of terror in the infinity of stars, though Johnny increasingly felt lately as though he ought to have been out among them, over them, instead of stuck here below them. Instead of touching some part of infinity, he was apparently a sub-section of Edgar's life. A side-kick. A background character. So separated from the universe he wasn't able to connect with more than four of the millions of other people stuck on the same spinning hunk of rock.

  


Despite his frustration, he never tired of the stars.

  


Edgar was definitely not expecting Johnny to be sitting on the floor when he emerged from his bedroom in the morning clad in an awkward pair of shorts and plain gray t-shirt.

  


“Ah!”

  


Johnny just looked at him. Amazing, Edgar had just slept through everything. So much was going on and Edgar could just _sleep._

  


“Um, morning,” Edgar said. “Have you been up long?”

  


“All night.”

  


“Wow, sorry. Couldn't sleep?”

  


“Something like that.” He'd understand in a little while.

  


Edgar shifted in place and glanced at the bathroom door. “Sorry. Just give me five minutes and I'll get dressed and everything.”

  


Like he needed to be dressed for this. Or for anything. What were they going to do all day? Where were they going to go? They had this _thing_ sitting all around them in this house, why even... Johnny looked back to the window he'd spent all night with, but there was morning sunshine and bright blue where his comforting stars had been.

 

Johnny sat through running water and flushing and clicking and tapping and he just did not have fucking time for the sounds of other humans. One could fall off a table with a person and feel a kind of injured camaraderie, but no one should ever have to be subjected to the sounds of someone else's morning routine.

  


Edgar emerged from his bedroom again, pulling a shirt down over his head, and adjusting his glasses. “Okay.”

  


“Okay.”

  


“Do you want something to eat, or...?”

 

 _No, no, that's a huge distraction._ “Edgar, do you know where the stuff in this place comes from?”

  


“Well, the basement, mostly.” Edgar gestured down the stairs. “I could show you if-”

  


“I've already been.”

  


“Oh.”

  


Johnny twisted the key necklace around his finger. “What do you think this stuff is supposed to be for?”

  


“Living? Making the house a house?”

  


“Why?”

  


Edgar shook his head and picked at his thumbnail. He was easy to make nervous, and even easier to read when he was. “I don't know. I've never known. I used to think it was there to help me.”

  


“Would things for _me_ help you?”

  


Johnny released the necklace and let it drop as he stared into Edgar, looking for any twitch to betray what he knew. Edgar shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with the sustained eye contact.

  


“I don't understand?”

  


“Maybe we _should_ get something to eat after all.” Johnny got to his feet and took two deliberate and heavy steps down the stairs. Edgar, to his credit, noticed.

  


“Are those... new?”

  


Johnny smiled and Edgar shrank away from him, just a bit. _Good._ “Oh, these old things? Just a gift from your basement.”

  


“I don't – it's never been things for anyone else. It's always just food and clothes and just whatever I'm interested in.”

  


Johnny folded his arms across his chest. “Clearly, then, you're interested in _me._ ”

  


“No, I didn't mean that, I-”

  


“What did you say, and who did you say it to, about making the last version of me _happy?”_

  


Edgar looked lost and ran his hand through his hair. His eyes darted left and right as he scanned the floor, apparently for his memories. “I don't- God, it's so fuzzy, I – we were _dead_. I knew we were dead. And I was going to be okay with that, but _you..._ I was worried about you.”

  


“Why?”

  


“I didn't think things were going to be okay for you, I thought ...” He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “I thought you had suffered a lot already, and I wanted to try to fix it, because I couldn't do it that time.”

  


Johnny took a step up and peered into Edgar's face. “Who did you ask?”

  


“Whoever was in charge of that sort of thing? Heaven? Hell? Some sort of third party soul caterer? I don't know.”

  


There was so much tightness in his chest, so much stuff ready to burst from his head, from his throat, and this was all so much easier to deal with alone, but there was no way to move forward with it without Edgar's help and the only direction to go was forward. Forward, or above.

  


“Come here.” Johnny gestured with a few fingers for Edgar to follow him into the room with the book. Edgar followed him without a word.

  


Johnny had to give the door a little extra shove with his shoulder, but the door opened and released a rush of cold air that swirled around them.

  


_Like a fucked up little 'hello.'_

  


“God, it's freezing in here,” Edgar said, following Johnny inside. He looked around at the room like he hadn't seen it in years. “What the hell happened to the window?”

  


Johnny retrieved the book from the corner where he'd thrown it and glanced over his shoulder at the still open window. “I was trying something.”

  


“Do you still need it open?”

  


“No.”

  


Edgar went to the window, put both arms up to slide it closed, and then stopped, blinking at the outside. “Is that--?” He leaned back and looked at the space on the wall where the horse painting had been.

  


“I'll make you a better one. Pay attention, this is sort of pressing.”

  


Edgar pulled the window closed and joined Johnny in the center of the room. Johnny handed him the book, but Edgar showed no signs of recognizing it. He glanced at Johnny for a cue, then opened the book like he thought maybe some spring loaded snakes would burst out. He turned the empty pages slowly, but when he came to the one showing their names, he jumped backward as though he'd been physically hit with something.

  


“Oh my god, what is this?”

 

“Oh, keep going. You're not even at the best part.”

  


Edgar flipped forward, and increasing expression of horror on his face with every page turn. “Oh my god. I never knew. I... holy shit. Sometimes it's like I don't even remember this room is here.” He looked at Johnny, his eyes wide. “Were they keeping me from coming in here?”

  


“Beats the hell out of me, I'm just an accessory.”

  


“What?”

  


Johnny leaned close and began flipping the pages for Edgar until he hit the final page of written material somewhere near the center of the book. His name seemed to scream off the page at him. He jammed his finger so forcefully on the list of his own possessions that he nearly tore the page. Edgar read with one hand over his mouth. When he reached the end, he looked up from the book and helplessly at Johnny.

  


“Who is Pepito? What is this key?”

  


Johnny picked up the key on his neck. “This one. It was on the ring with the rest of them. I'm thinking Pepito is the guy who gave these all to me.”

  


“I don't understand any of this, I don't—”

  


“ _You?_ I'm one person with a bunch of _keys_ , but I get a special entry in your demonic OCD registry! And your basement knows my fucking shoe size and wants to give me _presents!_ This shit with my name on it was here before I ever set foot in here!”

  


“They probably sent things because of me asking to make you happy, I --”

  


“You didn't ask to do anything for _me!”_

  


“I just told you, I--”

  


“No, that was for _him_ , that wasn't _me._ Why does everything in your house think _I_ am a suspicious problem to be dealt with?”

  


“I don't know! You asked not to remember the awful things when you came back, that was the condition! So there should be nothing to make you suspicious now!”

  


Everything in Johnny strained to get out of him, like his body desperately wanted to be inside out. “So everything I don't remember is something horrible.”

  


“Probably not _all_ of it,” Edgar said, wincing.

  


The static that protected the black memories suddenly flared to life and he felt himself moving, but hardly felt present in his own body. He staggered against the door frame and clawed his way along the wall into his new room down the hall. Somewhere, in a fish bowl far away, Edgar tried to contact him.

  


“Nny? Hey? Are you okay?”

  


His body shook so hard he thought his bones would come apart at the joints and he'd just fall apart like a broken puppet. There was a sound like choking and gargling coming from his throat and he thought he'd vomit if he heard it much longer.

  


He'd wanted to remember. He'd just wanted to know where he was from.

  


“Johnny!” Pounding on something? The door maybe. He could have closed it behind him. “I'm sorry! Please, let me in!”

  


Here he was, still shaking and fending off static. He wasn't who the other Edgar had asked to help, and yet he'd been actively trying to look into that person's memory. Why have any of it? Why remember the Freezies and the car and _Edgar_ at all if the context all had to be removed?Why was he put together this way? Would he be different now if he'd never remembered Devi and Jimmy?  What had he done to himself any of the times he'd tried so hard to remember?

  


It wasn't convulsing, and the sound wasn't choking: _he was laughing._

  


He'd be different if he remembered what was behind the black. If he remembered the awful. He'd be two whole people and a fragment of a third all smashed into one body, and they all fit _so badly_ within the confines of his skull already...

  


Stinging in his palms from his fingernails digging into flesh, hands balled into fists so hard he wondered if he'd ever use his hands again.

  


Every shred of the black he recovered was a change in the him who lived right now. Every recovered memory, good or bad, altered him and made him someone else. Murdering himself over and over with every vague notion of another life's habits.

  


The floor below him was old painted wood and he curled against it like he could burrow through. His hands uncurled themselves, offering a glimpse of the searing red crescents on his palms before his fingers clawed at the floor. Trying to dig through the floor, trying to dig things out of his own head like trying to get rid of holes by cutting them out of the fabric.

  


He didn't even have fabric anymore, he had worn and weathered patches of a mental blanket long since torn to ribbons.

  


“Johnny?” Edgar again. Far away.

  


He was stuck as he was. He couldn't un-remember and if he found more, the person he was would die. Knowing Edgar had revealed tiny patches. Would they spread? Was Edgar contagious?

  


His back arched and twisted and the black static buzzed in his head and he assumed that he was still breathing, though he could not feel it. He was trying desperately to get out of something that clearly wanted out of _him,_ and it was possible he'd tear himself in half in the fight with it. He watched his hands curl up like some creature's talons, raking his nails over the floor a final time as his fingers twisted around to form a fist. He didn't even feel it when he slammed his fist against the floor.

  


“Fuck!”

  


And then it abruptly let go of him and he crumpled to the floor.

  


  


  


 

A clinking sort of thud, some tiny vibration.

 

“Can you hear me?”

 

When Johnny opened his eyes, he was just grateful that he was the one in control of them.

 

His cheek was pressed to the floor. Directly in front of him were Edgar's knee and a glass of water.

 

Edgar exhaled loudly in relief. “There you are. Are you okay?”

 

Johnny rolled into his back, and held one of his hands up above his head. All his fingers moved, and only when he told them to. It was good to see them. The light behind them, however, was too much to look at, and he closed his eyes.

 

“I'm stuck this way,” Johnny said. He let his hand fall over his eyes and just breathed, frankly enjoying that he could. His fingers ran over his forehead. Some of his hair was wet. “I can’t ever remember any of what I have missing. If I get back what he wanted to forget, I’m him, and he’s me. I disappear. He’ll wake up in my body, and everything I am will be just extra memories for him. And you’ll go off and be best friends and ride into the fucking sunset with your complete brains, and I’ll just… stop.”

 

Edgar clinked the glass on the floor. “That's not true.”

 

Johnny opened one eye and slid his hand along the floor until he grasped the glass.

 

_He's getting my attention with a glass of water...?_

 

_!_

 

_Is he avoiding touching me?_

 

“I'm stuck. I've been looking for how to get these holes repaired – that's why I even talked to you! - but if I remember, who the fuck am I going to be?”

 

It took some effort, but Johnny hauled himself into a sitting position and took a drink of the water. With both eyes open, and upright, he began to feel better. Edgar sat cross-legged nearby, biting his lip, and hands held close over his stomach, his fingers flexing as though he were literally itching to reach out and help.

 

The crescents on Johnny's palms were magnified by the cup.

 

“Who do you want me to kill, Edgar?” Something flickered in his head, flashed, spattered, clanged, and then it was gone.

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

Johnny set down the glass and rocked back against the wall, gazing to the ceiling. “From where I'm sitting, I figure my matches to your mirror buddies either die, or I do. Either I fill in some of these holes, like I wanted, but lose myself in the process, or I don't look for more memories, and you live with just having shreds left of the person you were so keen on finding and making happy.”

 

Edgar gestured with the kind of sincerity he must have learned from television: one hand on his chest, the other 'offering' toward Johnny. “Listen, I don't want you to go anywhere, and I don't think I or any of the guys in the mirror want the old versions of you back _specifically._ I'd like to know more – about both of us – but I'm not particularly invested in an alternate you.”

 

“What _are_ you invested in?”

 

Edgar blinked at him. “I don't know, I guess. It was finding you for so long that now that you're here I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I thought it was supposed to be making you happy-”

 

Johnny frowned at him.

 

“I know, I know. But, after hearing you talk, I'm not even sure if that's my memory to bother with pursuing. Not that I want you to be miserable or anything. I just remember very clearly not wanting them to just toss you – him – aside. So I did this. I'm starting to remember it so much that it really feels like it was me who did it, and not the guy in the mirror, even though I know it was.”

 

“I wish you'd have just let them do what they wanted. I'm going to be stuck as fragments of people my whole life now.” Johnny ran his hand through his hair. Definitely wet. When he looked at his palm, he expected to find blood, and was startled that it was not there.

 

“Sorry about that,” Edgar said. He reached out and wiggled the empty water glass. “I didn't want to touch you because I promised not to, but I was trying to wake you up, so...”

 

“Oh.”   _That really was what the water was for. Huh._ _  
_

“As for 'fragments of people,'” Edgar said, “that's ridiculous. If anyone's the fragment, I am. I live here alone in this apparently possessed house just being taken care of all the time with no one to talk to, and you...” He gestured to Johnny and looked lost, like he had no idea where to start. “You have fun, you have _friends_ , you do things, you're creative, you're interesting. I'm just just kind of a guy with three faces in a mirror.”

 

Johnny laughed. “You don't think that's interesting?”

 

“It's kind of one note. Once you've seen them, you've seen them,”

 

He couldn't remember if Edgar had always been kind of dorkily charming, but Johnny hoped so.  “Where did all this come from? What were we _doing_ that you felt so bad you wanted to wish us back to life as dumb kids with holes in our heads?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “You're my best friend. I'm fond of you.”

 

“Surely that's the other guy talking. You've known me for two days.”

 

“It feels longer though, doesn't it? You said so yourself. And I guess 'best' is a kind of a relative term. You're currently the only friend I have, so even if you turn out to be a horrible one, you're still the best one I've got. 'Best' maybe doesn't mean ' _most good_ ' so much as _'least awful_.'”

 

Johnny felt the laugh kind of bubble out of him, and this time none of his joints felt like they'd come undone. It had almost stopped surprising him that Edgar made him laugh so often, but it was never this frequent with Devi and Jimmy. Sometimes, he thought he was just subconsciously indulging Edgar, but other times, like this, he was genuinely delighted.

 

“That's the best thing I've ever heard you say. In any life I can remember.”

 

Edgar smiled at him. “Thank you.”

 

“Which is not to say that everything you say doesn't suck, that might just be the least suck.”

 

“Ah. Touché.”

 

There were scratches on the floor next to Johnny that revealed the brown wood under the ugly pale blue paint job. When he looked at the blue paint under his fingernails, his fingertips ached.

 

“So what now?”

 

Edgar shook his head. “I don't know. I want to say I imagined it differently than this, but I didn't imagine anything at all.”

 

Johnny sighed against the wall and looked back to the ceiling.“Yeah, I usually imagine interactions with the supernatural going a little better than this.”

 

“We can figure it out. I have faith in us.”

 

Johnny scoffed and picked some paint out from under his fingernail. “I envy your conviction.”

 

He felt it immediately. They both stopped completely: no breath, no nervous fidgeting, no blinking. Johnny would have bet the money he did not have on 'no heartbeat' as well. He thought, maybe, if he just didn't look up, didn't acknowledge it, it would pass, and nothing would happen.

 

When he looked up, Edgar sat in frozen in place, staring back at him.

 

“You too?” Johnny whispered.

 

Edgar barely nodded.

 

The static buzzed just enough to accelerate Johnny's breathing, but he had it, it did not have him.

 

“It isn't going to stop, is it?”

 

Edgar swallowed. “I don't know, but... probably not.”

 

“I don't want this. I don't want to disappear.”

 

“You won’t,” Edgar said.

 

“How do you know? That came from no where! Just a random sentence! This could all come flooding back in on me and drown me in my own thoughts! I could suffocate in this other person!” His felt his arms shaking and his shoulder blades pressed painfully against the wall.

 

Edgar held his hands out in front of him, reassuring. “You won't, because no one wanted that to happen. I was supposed to make you happy apparently, and this would not make you happy, so we just won't let it happen.”

 

“That's fucking easy for you to say!” Johnny curled back against the wall, and, a quick study as always, Edgar slid a foot or two back to give him space.

 

“You keep saying he's going to push you out, but you can do the same thing. Maybe you change when you learn more about him, but _everyone_ changes, you're _supposed to_.  Remembering him does not erase everything you've done! I know the other versions of you didn't live in a choir room. Are you planning to suddenly forget that, or erase everything that experience has contributed to who _you_ are?”

 

“ _I was me but now he's gone.”_

 

“What?”

 

“It's a song I know.” Johnny relaxed a little, stretched his legs back out slowly. “You know it, too, before you ask.”

 

Johnny's headphones were still around his neck, but there was no sound. He pulled the cord away from himself and felt it whip around his waist. There was nothing attached to the other end.

 

“Where's-?”

 

“It's in the hall. You threw it when you ran out of the room laughing.”

 

“Fuck.” He braced himself to stand but Edgar got to his feet first.

 

“Don't. I'll go get it.”

 

Johnny's breathing was still shaky when Edgar returned the thankfully intact CD player. The CD inside was even still spinning. Johnny plugged in the headphones and was washed with instant relief from the tension.

 

 _“Far beyond the farthest corners_  
Of our stratosphere  
While the planets go on spinning  
We are banished here"

  


“We'll be okay,” Edgar said. “I don't know what the hell is happening, but we can figure it out.”

  


“You just keep telling yourself that. I'm sure you'll do great things.”

  


“Why don't you think-?”

  


_Ugh._ “How many of those video games have you played, Edgar? The ones you have downstairs.”

  


_"Now we are synthetic, genetic point the way_  
 _We'll be building humans from plastic parts one day_  
 _Somewhere a computer records us from afar_  
 _Looking for the error in the system on this star”_

  


Johnny could see Edgar's mind trying to connect the question to any of their recent conversation. His eyes kept darting down to his left, he was biting his lip. He gave up, and looked back to Johnny after a few seconds consideration. “Most of them, I guess.”

  


“You know the NPCs?”

  


“The what?”

  


Johnny laughed bitterly.

 

 _“_ _The_ __non-player characters_ _ _._ The people who say the same thing over and over every time you talk to them. The little guys who are just there to help you advance the story. Side-notes in the manual, perhaps.”

  


_“Far beyond the farthest corners_  
 _Of our stratosphere_  
 _While the planets go on spinning_ _  
__We are banished here”_

  


_“....yes?”_

  


_"Out of our creation, we have lost control_  
 _Banished on a planet where dreams are bought and sold_  
 _Somewhere a computer observing how we are_  
 _Searching for the error in the system on this star”_

  


“I think I'm your NPC.”

  


_Far beyond the farthest corners_  
 _Of our stratosphere_  
 _While the planets go on spinning  
We are banished here..."_

  


Edgar appeared to have no words for that and Johnny honestly preferred it that way. He picked himself up off the floor, terrified of his own brain, but still so curious it was nauseating. “I think I need to go see Key Guy and find out when I have to give you your magical item.”

  


“Is it?”

  


“Is what?”

  


“Magical.” Edgar nodded toward Johnny's neck. “The key.”

  


“It's...” Johnny rubbed the key with his thumb. It was his , was what it was. He'd joked about having to give Edgar a magical item, but fuck if he was surrendering this. Besides, it was curiously specific to him...

  


“It's okay,” Edgar said suddenly.  Johnny looked up and Edgar stood up beside him, smiling, though he looked tired. “You don't have to tell me.”

  


Who is this kid?  How does he function like this? Johnny didn't know what to tell him, what to say to him, he could only look and try to figure out what was going on in there to find the root of all this optimistic sincerity.   “I'll show you later.”

  


“Okay. After you.” Edgar stood at the door and gestured for Johnny to lead the way out. Johnny shook his head as he tucked the key under the collar of his shirt, but ducked through the door at Edgar's dorky request.  Edgar shut the door behind them.  

 

“Do you want to eat something before we go track down Key Guy?”

  


“' We '?”

  


“I'd like to go too.”

  


“I can handle one asshole with a keyring on my own, thanks.”

  


“Yeah, but I think this is probably a supernatural asshole, and I apparently live in a supernatural house with a supernatural book, and supernatural pair of extra faces in the mirror.”

  


Johnny stopped in the hall as Edgar continued down the stairs. “They're my keys.”

  


“I didn't say they weren't. I just think you and I are a little...” He frowned up at Johnny and waved his hands like he was trying to conjure the right word. “Connected, I guess.”

  


It was frustrating that Edgar was right. Their names had literally been written on the same opening page of some kind of possessed book, and of all the people Johnny knew, which was admittedly not many, Edgar was the only one who remembered him, and who sought him out.

  


He followed Edgar down the stairs. “Fine. You have some cherry Pop-Tarts we could eat on the way over.”

 

“Do I?”

  


_“Yeah. I found them in the box of me in your basement.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter where lots of things are changing behind the scenes, but it mostly looks familiar on the surface. 
> 
> Details of the conversations have changed, but they still go to the same general places. 
> 
> We can see a lot of the things I've added to Edgar here, though, which makes me happy. Most of his socialization came from television, so he sometimes has gestures and sentiments that are really suited for scripted shows and are sort of charmingly dorky in real life. 
> 
> He also, however, has been taking a lot of those television lessons to heart along with what he remembers from his other lives, and is thus really pretty wise, even when he doesn't know what is going on. It's not the kind of freaky supernatural intuition that Johnny has, it's just a very solid wisdom he can apply to things even when he's clueless about everything else. We'll see more of it later when Johnny starts to really rely on it.
> 
> Johnny quotes a bit of 'Fade to Black', which is evidently a Metallica song, but I've been listening to the Apoptygma Berserk cover of it for years, and still haven't heard the original, so that's the one I think of. (This is the 'I was me but now he's gone' line.)
> 
> We'll switch back to Edgar's POV next time, which should be interesting, because he didn't go with Johnny on the original visit to Pepito! 
> 
> The song is the same as the original counterpart to this chapter (which was SWAN 7):
> 
> Peter Schilling - "Error in the System"


	7. an answer only dead men know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny and Edgar visit The Key Guy.

Edgar walked outside with Johnny like he'd never been there before. Every blade of grass felt new, every routine thing exciting. The air was fresh and warm, he had something sweet and unhealthy to eat, the sun was shining, and he actually knew someone! Everything was great, even if the book thing had been a little alarming.

 

“You don't get out much, huh?”

 

Edgar immediately took a really embarrassed and sheepish bite of his Pop-Tart. “It's just new to be doing something with purpose.” He covered his mouth with his hand. “And, you know, with someone.”

 

Johnny smirked at him. “Well, then let's teach you some shit, shall we? Then you can have purpose with a few more people. Look down there. You see that?”

 

Directly down the street, in line with Johnny's pointing, about three blocks away sat the funeral home parking lot. It was immaculate – all fresh black asphalt and crisp white and yellow lines - but for the corner in the far back, where a particularly shitty and incongruous trailer sat surrounded by caution tape.

 

“Jimmy lives there.”

 

“In... what looks like a crime scene at a funeral home?” He wanted to ask how but figured he would not be told.

 

“Yeah, and Devi's just another block beyond that.”

 

All the people who could see him lived within a five minute walk of his house. “I could have met you guys any time...”

 

Johnny shrugged and crammed more than half of his Pop-Tart into his mouth at once. “Ah shupposh.”

 

“Should we go see them? They seemed worried about you.”

 

Johnny chewed through his Pop-Tart and answered once he had it down. “They'll get over it. I don't want to take a parade over to this guy's house, and they're not really involved. We'll see them later.”

 

They turned right at the funeral home parking lot, and Edgar had a curious feeling of being watched. Almost immediately, 'Ride of the Valkyries' started up from Johnny's pocket.

 

“Oh, come the _fuck on._ ” Johnny opened the phone and wiped some red sugar sprinkles from his mouth with his sleeve. “What do you want, Jimmy? Yes, I am walking by your house.”

 

Edgar looked cautiously over his shoulder at the dilapidated trailer and slowed his pace in case they needed to stop. Johnny, however, snapped his fingers in Edgar's face, shook his head 'no' while Jimmy apparently went on at length in his ear, and pointed forward.

 

“No, you can't come,” Johnny said into the phone. He and Edgar passed some garages and entrances to alleys and there was a pause while Jimmy talked.

 

“Yeah, you do that and I'm never letting you in my office again.”

 

Johnny walked on with a sour expression and impatience nearly radiating from his twitchy fingers.

 

“Fine, you know what you can do? Go check out the fundraiser in the choir room for me and see if we can get it removed. Yeah. Thanks.”

 

He hung up the phone and stopped on the corner of the sidewalk across the street from the choir room. There was a large fenced-in yard behind them.

 

“This is the place,” Johnny said, tipping his head back.

 

Edgar turned around to get a good look at the home of someone who handed out supernatural keys, but it was just a house. Two stories, covered with normal red siding and a normal black shingled roof and surrounded by a normal wooden fence. An old woman could have lived there. “It's definitely unassuming.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Lots of supernatural shit is. Keys, rusty swords, stones with holes in them, circles of mushrooms and shit.”

 

“Those kind of weird me out.”

 

“Agreed.” Johnny pocketed his phone and then turned to face Edgar instead of the school. “So before we go in there, you should see this.”

 

Johnny tugged the key necklace out of his shirt. He held the key out toward Edgar between his thumb and forefinger. “This is one the book was talking about.”

 

“I assume you're going to show me how you know.”

 

“Yeah. I just want you to make sure you're looking at it.”

 

Edgar bit his lip, hoping that this wasn't something else that would hurt.

 

“I didn't find out right away, because I don't talk to myself very often, and for _some reason_ I just don't seem to be meeting a lot of new people. But, if I ever find myself needing to say 'Johnny'...”

 

When he said his own name, the key tugged away from Johnny's neck and toward the fence beside them as if trying to choke him with the cord it was tied to. Edgar jumped back and then watched the key just fall back against Johnny's collar bone.

 

“What the fuck.”

 

“Indeed.”

 

“But you – when you introduced yourself to me -”

 

Johnny grinned and bowed the way he had in the office, and this time Edgar watched him hold his hand to his throat, covering the key.

 

“I see. Do the others know about this?”

 

“Yeah, sort of. I kind of made it out to be just a dumb magic trick, but I think Tenna's caught on. Might be they all know and they're playing dumb for me, I don't know. They're kind of like that.”

 

“And you think this is the one that-”

 

“Come on, around the corner. Jimmy's coming.”

 

“What, how can you even hear--?”

 

“Just come on.”

 

Johnny grabbed Edgar's shoulder and shoved him toward the front of the house and around the large fence...

 

...where Edgar would have fallen into the bushes that wrapped around the side of the yard if there hadn't been someone there already.

 

Hunched on the sidewalk behind the bushes was a pale lanky kid in large glasses and a long black trenchcoat that pooled on the ground behind him. He was 'Hmm'ing loudly to himself and poking at a tiny touch screen phone in his hand.

 

Johnny walked up behind him and peered over his shoulder. Edgar followed cautiously after and they stood that way for a while, all staring at what appeared to be an annotated video feed of the front of the house.

 

“So, I give up, what is it?” Johnny said.

 

Trenchcoat jumped, flailed his arms a bit, and nearly fell further into the bushes. Johnny took a few steps to avoid being taken out too, but Edgar actually reached out and grabbed Trenchcoat's hand so he wouldn't flip through the bushes and into the lawn. Evidently, no one involved had counted on being seen.

 

“It's nothing,” Trenchcoat said, clearing his throat. “I was just watching.”

 

Edgar released his hand and Trenchcoat straightened his collar and brushed some twigs out of his weirdly spiked and slicked hair.

 

Johnny leaned close to Edgar's shoulder and whispered, “Why are the only people I can interact with complete basket cases?”

 

“Excuse you.”

 

Johnny laughed, and Edgar swore there was a kind of fond 'ping' in his chest that made him smile. As Johnny leaned forward to inspect Trenchcoat's phone, Edgar thought this might be the start of a complicated problem.

 

“So what are you watching on this?” Johnny asked as Trenchcoat tried to pull away. “As far as I can tell, this house isn't doing a little jig or anything, so why record it?”

 

“Just... things. To see if there was... stuff.” Then he jumped abruptly and startled even Johnny. Trenchcoat yelled loudly and dramatically, as though he was hoping to cue someone else 'off stage' somewhere, “ Well , _that's_ enough of _that_!”

 

Edgar looked at Johnny, Johnny looked at Edgar, but no one else crawled out the bushes. “I'll see you later, citizens, there's really something _else_ I should be watching! For the good of all mankind!”

 

Then just as quickly as he'd launched into the theatrical routine, he leaned down close to Johnny's ear, and he was a different person. He spoke quietly and damn near normally. “Be on guard. Something's not right with these two.” He handed Johnny a business card. “If you need me, I'm Agent Mothman, and I'm in the music room.”

 

He stood back upright, and then attempted to make a dramatic spin away. Instead, he crashed into the sidewalk and Edgar and Johnny both cringed upon impact.

 

Edgar tried to call after him. “Are you okay?”

 

But “Agent Mothman” shuffled away across the sidewalk and then ran at top speed across the street toward the school.

 

Johnny let out a low whistle and then looked down at the business card. Edgar looked over Johnny's shoulder at the giant picture of an eye on the card that listed 'Agent Mothman' as a Paranormal Investigator.

 

It was difficult to find words beyond, “Holy shit.”

 

Johnny just shook his head. “Yeah. To think that I could have ended up with that guy looking for me instead of the weirdo with too many faces in the mirror. This whole 'mostly invisible' thing is a real crap shoot.”

 

Edgar looked up the house, now that they'd spent considerable time on the edge of its property. It was mostly red brick on the front to match the siding they'd seen in the back, with a gray and weathered set of old wooden steps leading to a concrete porch. It was midday, so it would have been hard to see lights inside at all, but Edgar thought he was seeing black curtains.

 

“Well then,” Johnny said, pocketing the business card and setting sights squarely on the front door. “Shall we?” He repeated his own bow from earlier, but with a hint of mocking Edgar for his 'after you' back at his house. It was … _charming._

 

The little ping came back and Edgar swore he could feel some heat that was not from the warm day. This could definitely be a problem.

 

They took the steps together, though Edgar was a little concerned that the old wood wouldn't hold them both at the same time. When they reached the top, Johnny stood in front of the big black door with three finger tips pressed just above the handle.

 

He turned his head to look at Edgar. “Can you hear that?”

 

Edgar leaned closer, and felt the vibrations coming from the door. Pounding and beeping from somewhere deep in the house. “Yeah.”

 

_“_ Here goes.” Johnny pushed the doorbell hard with his thumb and Edgar heard it practically screaming somewhere inside the house. With every second he became even more hyper aware of his heartbeat but they seemed to stand on that porch for ages.

 

Johnny frowned and jammed his knuckle against the button, pressing and holding it. This time, there were some confused voices, footsteps, and the clinking of chains. There was a click, the door handle twisted, Edgar held his breath, and then the door opened-

 

-only to be slammed back in their faces.

 

“What the fuck?! Hey!” Johnny immediately leaped at the door like an animal, slamming his hands against it and screaming. “Hey! Open the door, dammit!”

 

Edgar reached out to try to encourage him to cease his assault on the door. “Calm down, calm down. Someone's talking.”

 

From inside, the voices could just be heard over the strange pounding music. Johnny and Edgar both stood with ears pressed against the door.

 

__“...that screaming?”_ _

 

__“Nothing, just some missionaries. I always hate to disappoint them.”_ _

 

__“Missionaries don't scream 'fuck.'”_ _

 

__“No, no, it's no one!”_ _

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow.

 

“Was that Key Guy we saw?” Edgar asked.

 

“Yeah. Weird looking fucker, isn't he?”

 

“Um, __yeah._ _ I can't believe you told him your name, accepted the keys, and then didn't get carted off in a white van.”

 

“I told you, I was apparently an idiot a year ago.”

 

Inside, there was more shuffling and clinking and then the door opened again, startling Johnny and Edgar away from it.

 

This was not Key Guy, but a fairly normal looking guy, probably in his early twenties. Dark hair, a tshirt with some kind of demon bear graphic on it, and a sort of look about his face that made him just look weary. Edgar had better hopes for this until Normal Guy did a double take when he saw Johnny and recoiled from him like he'd been burned.

 

“Pepe, you've got to be __kidding!”_ _

 

Key Guy popped up from behind him. _“I_ __told you_ _ _!”_

 

Key Guy was definitely a strange-looking person. Possibly the same age as Normal Guy, but taller, with all of his stringy black hair flipping across his head from a single strip in the center that ran to the back of his skull from his forehead. There was a greenish tinge to his complexion, and his eyes, even for the brief seconds Edgar saw them, were subtly unsettling, though Edgar couldn't place why. His most obvious feature, however, was that he was draped head to toe in loops chains and fabric containing dozens upon dozens of locks and keys.

 

“I didn't think it would be __this!_ _ _”_ Normal Guy shrieked, motioning dramatically to Johnny. “This is __insane!_ _ _”_

 

Key Guy stepped elegantly in front of Normal Guy and reached around him to grab the door knob.

 

“Excuse us a moment, won't you?” He grinned at Johnny, gave something of a nodding bow that sent the key tied into his hair swinging and bobbing with the motion, before he snapped the door closed and continued his panicked conversation inside.

 

Neither Johnny nor Edgar moved.

 

“This has been the weirdest twenty-four hours of my life,” Edgar said.

 

“That is really not much of an accomplishment for you,” Johnny replied, staring at the door. “But I think it's pretty high up on my list too.”

 

Behind the door, the conversation still went on.

 

__“You gave them to_ _ _him_ __of all people?”_ _ Normal Guy hissed.

 

__“Listen, listen. Calm yourself. He understands, it will all be fine.”_ _

 

__“Were you not listening to me when I told you about him?”_ _

 

__“Of course, that's why I-”_ _

 

__“Oh, god why did I even-”_ _

 

__“Trust me.”_ _

 

__“Trust you?! Did you see, did you just- He's standing right- 'Trust me' and 'Please let me give this crazy man the key t-”_ _

 

__“Shh shhh!”_ _

 

__“...totally different things. You're going to fix it, right?”_ _

 

__“Of course, amigo, of course.”_ _

 

The voices dropped beyond what Edgar could hear. He glanced at Johnny who looked like he was concentrating deeply on simply breathing.

 

“Do you know that guy?” Edgar asked softly. “The normal one?”

 

Johnny shook his head. It was a tight and quick motion, and he never took his eyes off the door. “No.”

 

“We could leave. You said you didn't want to do anymore, we could just-”

 

“We've already opened it.”

 

He didn't know what to say, what to do. On television, obviously scared and stressed people are so easily comforted with a hand on the shoulder or grasping hands or touches on arms. They like hugs and pats on the back and people smoothing hands over their hair. Every answer he had for this situation was touch, and that was one thing he'd promised not to do.

 

Finally, the door clicked again, and Key Guy stepped out. He kicked a few trailing bits of keys and chains out from around his feet and closed the door behind him. Normal Guy was no where to be seen.

 

“Well, if it isn't the little ratty kid with no friends and too many locks.” He looked Edgar up and down. “I see you've fixed the first problem. How are those keys working for you?”

 

“I want to know what this one is,” Johnny said, holding up the one tied around his neck.

 

Key Guy folded his hands in front of him. He had long pointed, claw-like magenta-tipped fingernails. “Oh, I had so many keys, how am I to tell which ones go where?”

 

“Only this one reacts to me.” If Johnny was still having trouble breathing, or was scared about his brain at all, he didn't show it. He looked ready to tear Key Guy to pieces. Johnny was not a large person, even among people his own age, so he was currently dwarfed by Key Guy, and yet, Key Guy backed away.

 

“Now, now, kid.”

 

“My name is not ' _kid,'_ it's __Johnny.”_ _ The key lurched forward toward Key Guy, who slid back against his door. Johnny took a step forward.

 

“Yes, yes.” Key Guy waved him away. “I know your name. Why don't you come in?” He smiled devilishly, and opened the door to his house. “Your little friend is welcome as well.”

 

Johnny stood rooted in place, staring daggers to match Key Guy's sharp smile.

 

“Well, how about it? _We have cookies.”_

 

Edgar made eye contact with Johnny, and that was all, but somehow he knew they were both going in there.

 

 

 

The house was badly lit inside, though Edgar had been right about black curtains. The house looked old-fashioned even in the memories of Edgar's other reflections and given the extreme rise in temperature just in side the door, was evidently not air conditioned. A stair case rounded a corner and vanished upstairs directly to their left, and to their right next to a large china cabinet was a wall of clothing somehow hanging from the ceiling. Music pounded through Edgar as he and Johnny removed their shoes. Johnny's shiny black boots stood out as the newest thing in the house, though they also offered a sharp contrast to his mismatched socks, which sported some holes in the toes and heels.

 

“Does this floor feel hot to you?” Johnny asked. He was frowning and wiggling his toes in the orange and brown shag carpet.

 

“Just the __floor_ _ _?”_

 

Key Guy emerged from the kitchen at the end of the hall holding a small silver tray. When Edgar leaned to his right, he could see ugly puke green linoleum and nearly matching refrigerator. There was also, just before the start of the kitchen, a door with a tiny shiny black handle.

 

“Shall we?” Key Guy drew the wall of clothes back and revealed a living room filled with boxes, but just as full with comfortable couches and chairs. Everything looked soft, warm, and plush even with boxes of folders and filing stacked to the ceiling. There was a flickering blueish light from the television covering everything, including Normal Guy who sat on one of the puffy chairs holding a video game controller. He bit his lip a little when Johnny and Edgar ducked into the room.

 

“Thanks,” Edgar said. Polite, but wary.

 

Key Guy let the clothes fall back into place behind them and Johnny immediately jumped. Edgar was about ready to make a run for it without their shoes when Johnny tore his headphones from his neck like they were burning him.

 

“What the fuck?” He wasn't loud enough for Key Guy to hear him over the music of the house, but Edgar heard and got closer.

 

“What's wrong?”

 

Key Guy set a small tray of cookies down on the table in front of where Normal Guy was sitting. Normal Guy shook his head, but took one.

 

“Come, come,” Key Guy said, waving Johnny and Edgar in. “Sit.”

 

The song in the house pulsed through Edgar's feet, his chest, his head. There was just so much of it.

 

_“ Next phase, next craze, next nothing new_

_got the pretty boy, beat him up black and blue”_

 

_J_ ohnny handed Edgar his headphones and walked slowly to the couch Key Guy had offered up. Edgar looked at them, unsure at first if he was just holding them or was supposed to listen. Normal Guy watched him intently.

 

_“broke the sissy boy's teeny toy heart in two,_   
  
_turned him into a video kid like you.”_

 

Edgar slowly drew the headphones to his ear as he took a seat next to Johnny. The song currently pounding through the house played in the headphones, at the exact same time.

 

_“ I know we're just pretending_

_there's no window for escape_

_I know you see right through me_

_there's no promise left to break”_

 

As Edgar handed back the headphones, a little stunned, he saw the confidence that Johnny had had on the porch wavering. Johnny set the headphones in his lap and the song continued to pound through Edgar's bones.

 

“So, perhaps some introductions are in order?” Key Guy twirled his hand and a small cup appeared there that Edgar swore he'd not walked in with.

 

“That's Squee,” Key Guy said, motioning to Normal Guy.

 

“Todd,” 'Squee' corrected with a resigned sigh.

 

Johnny tried to smile at him. “Todd? I like 'Squee' better.”

 

The smile was short lived and Edgar saw Johnny flinch and grip his headphones hard. The resolve he'd had on the porch seemed to be melting in the heat in here. Todd also had an unpleasant reaction to what Johnny said, frowning and wincing, but tried to cover it by eating another cookie and feigning extreme interest in his video game controller.

 

“And I,” Key Guy said, adopting a grand posture, “am the d-”

 

“Call him ' _Pepito,'”_ Todd interrupted.

 

_'_ Pepito' slumped into the chair next to Todd's. “Yes. I suppose that will do.”

 

Johnny's attention snapped to Pepito immediately. “So this is yours. ”

 

Pepito laced his fingers together over his lips. “What makes you say that?”

 

“Me,” Edgar said. “I've got a book at home that says the key on his neck is yours.”

 

“Pfft.” Pepito waved him off and conjured a cup again. It had definitely not been there a moment ago. He took a sip. “Many people have books in their homes that say disparaging things about me. None are true.”

 

Todd looked skeptical. _“_ __Really_ _ _?”_

 

_“_ __Most_ _ of them aren't,” Pepito amended. “And who are you to have a book that's any different?”

 

“My name is Edgar.”

 

Pepito rolled his eyes. “Oh, well! __Edgar!__ Had I but known. ”

 

_J_ ohnny may have actually growled, but it could have easily been the soundtrack in the house. “I really don't care how much you're going to sit and deny it. I want to know what it goes to, I want to why it tries to strangle me when I say my own name, I want to know why 'Squee' here thinks it's a problem that I have it.”

 

Todd glared at Pepito, who patted Todd's arm reassuringly in response. “It tries to strangle you because you tied it to your neck, boy. As for the rest of that, it would be nice if I just told you, wouldn't it?”

 

“So you do know.”

 

“Whether I do or not, you're getting the same answer.”

 

“Said no one who genuinely didn't know ever.”

 

Pepito tapped the tray on the table in front of him. “You're not eating.”

 

_J_ ohnny took four cookies and shoved them in his mouth at once, glaring at Pepito all the while. Edgar had never seen anyone chew at someone before, nor someone chewing with contempt. Edgar took two, just in case, but only ate one.

 

“He and I remember being alive before this,” Johnny said, wiping away bits of ginger snap the same way he had wiped away Pop-Tart. “You're mentioned in relation to __this key_ _ in a book that documents the contents of __his house_ _ that spontaneously generates shit.”

 

Todd again glared and this time Pepito could not do much to stop it.

 

“I find most houses generate shit,” Pepito said dismissively.

 

Edgar sighed. “Come on, what is wrong with you?”

 

“Everything,” Todd said, head in his hands.

 

Pepito tapped the cookie tray again, but rather than Pepito drawing attention to it this time, the entire tray simply vanished. Johnny's fingers curled into claws like they had yesterday at the keyboard, and Edgar felt most of his muscles tighten.

 

Pepito rose from his chair, but despite the keys and locks hanging from him, did not make a single sound. “Perhaps my friend is feeling a bit weary today,” he said. His voice had changed from light and pleasant host at a tea party to sounding like two very sinister voices at once. Edgar swore he saw some black smoke swirling near Pepito's feet. “We should continue this discussion __another time._ _ _”_

 

“We'll be back,” Johnny said rising from his seat.

 

“ Lovely. Though I think you ought to reconsider your motives.” Pepito moved through the coffee table like fog and curled his finger around the cord circling Johnny's neck. “We're all in agreement there's nothing to be gained from you becoming what you were, aren't we?”

 

Johnny tore away from him and pulled Edgar along through the wall of clothes with him. Edgar thought his heart would burst right along to the bass beat that still permeated the house, and then, as they stooped to collect their shoes, Pepito was right behind them, hovering so close Edgar should have been able to feel his breath. The black tendrils of smoke were definitely not imagined and they hovered and swirled just below Pepito's knees.

 

Up until this very moment, Edgar would have sworn that Pepito did not have horns.

 

_“_ Have a nice day,” Pepito said sweetly, still claws and horns and smoke. Behind him, Todd, normal as ever, poked his head through the wall of clothes and looked concerned not that Pepito had walked through objects and sprouted horns, but at Edgar and Johnny.

 

The next thing Edgar knew, he was standing on the sidewalk at the bottom of the old wooden steps, holding his shoes. Johnny stood next to him, boots in one hand, headphones in the other, breathing hard and staring into the street.

 

“Ohmygod.” The words spilled from Edgar's mouth as one.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Uh-huh.” Johnny looked at the boots and headphones in his hands and then at Edgar. “Are you?”

 

“I think so.”

 

It was terrifying to move and terrifying to consider staying there any longer. Edgar shook his head and pulled his shoes on, shoving the laces in the side under his ankle. “Let's just get out of here.”

 

Johnny seemed to be a on some sort of sensory processing delay, but nodded after several seconds and wrestled himself into his boots. He wrapped the laces around the top rather than lace them. “We'll stop at the school.”

 

Edgar had never been there when he wasn't 'supposed' to be. “Okay. Fine.”

 

Every step to the school's doors was shaky, every breath felt like it had been stolen and every glance at Johnny made him look more shaken up than the last. Johnny took his keys out automatically when they reached the bolted front doors of the building, flipping through the giant ring and finding the exact key in seconds. The doors unlocked with a loud clang and Johnny pushed his way through the doors without a word.

 

Johnny made an instant break to his left and headed straight for the door to the cafeteria, which he also opened with so much speed it might as well have not been locked.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“Just to sit down.”

 

Johnny ducked by two large garbage cans and backed into one of the booths along the wall, sliding across the seat until his back was pressed firmly against the wall. He drew his knees up close to his chest and began properly lacing his boots. Edgar slid quietly into the seat across the table from him, and set about tying his own shoes. Johnny's headphones sat on the table between them.

 

“What are those playing now?” Edgar asked, nodding toward the headphones as he looped his laces.

 

Johnny didn't look up from his boots. “I don't know.”

 

Edgar finished his shoes and reached across the table. “Can I?”

 

Johnny nodded against his knees. He actually looked grateful.

 

Not willing to risk being injured by music again, Edgar placed the headphones against only one ear. At first, he found the song unfamiliar, but he tried to relax andjust let himself know the song like he had with Johnny and his CD collection. It didn't work perfectly, but some of the words were familiar, at least.

 

_“Siren in my head is making awful sound_   
_it's time to make it clear_   
_what is lost and what is found”_

 

“It's a different song,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny shrugged _._

 

_“ _My life has been oh lame, has been oh lame so far  
I wasted years, I wasted time trying to reach the stars”__

 

“Do you want to listen to it?”

 

“What is it?”

 

_“Give me time and give me strength_  
 _give me strength to carry on  
_ _give me a bit of hope now, help me through the night”_

 

“Relevant?”

 

Johnny hit the volume on his CD player so the headphones were audible even to someone not wearing them. Edgar winced and pulled them away.

 

_“Siren in my head, yes, I can hear it again_   
_is it just the beginning, or is it the end?_

_My life has been oh lame_   
_has been oh lame so far_   
_I wasted years, I wasted time_   
_Trying to reach the stars”_

“Heh.” It was a weak laugh, but it was something. He turned the volume back down and held out his hand. Edgar dropped the headphones against Johnny's palm and they sat in silence for several seconds. The enormous clock on the wall above them, normally totally inaudible thanks to a cafeteria full of hungry teenagers, now ticked so loudly it almost hurt.

 

Edgar turned in the booth so he sat like Johnny with his back against the wall. Johnny wrapped his fingers around his headphones, but still didn't put them back on.

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar said. It echoed just as loudly as the clock.

 

Johnny shook his head and just looked lost. “This was all my stupid idea.”

 

“Only because I pushed to meet you in the first place.” Edgar sighed against the wall and looked out over the sea of empty chairs and tables. “And I guess because I asked for this.”

 

Johnny exhaled sharply and slapped the table with his hand. “Okay. We are sorting this out right now.”

 

Edgar looked across the table where Johnny was uncapping a marker he'd pulled from one of his pockets. He drew a quick stick figure directly onto the table and scribbled some spiky stuff on its head. “This is me.”

 

“O...kay.”

 

He drew another figure right next to it, this one had large circles drawn around its eyes. “This is you. Got it?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good.” Above the figure of himself, he drew a duplicate of it, with a small cloud of black scribble around it, and x's for eyes. “This is the guy who died and that this guy...,” he quickly doodled another Edgar stick figure, plus a tiny scribble beard, “...wanted to save and make happy and shit.”

 

“I think I see where-”

 

“And these two...” He drew another matching pair just above the second ones, but with intentionally erratic and terrifying lines. He blacked out his own figures' eyes and left Edgar's an empty void. “These are apparently the ones who are too fucked up for our brains to let us remember. Probably the 'originals.'”

 

Edgar turned in his seat to try to say something but Johnny was not done.

 

“My guess is that _this guy,”_ he jabbed the version of himself in the middle, with the black scribble around him, “was not constantly apologizing to _this guy,”_ pointing to the accompanying Edgar, “for anything _this guy,”_ and then the 'original' Johnny, “did to _this guy._ ” The tip of his marker rested on the last Edgar in the stack, the one he always saw as a little gaunt and terrifying in the mirror.

 

Johnny recapped his marker and re-pocketed it. “I use me because I was probably more likely to have done something to you, though those other guys in my head were probably assholes just like me, so maybe you ought to reverse all that. They probably didn't apologize for any shit at all. The point still stands.”

 

Edgar glanced up at Johnny. “You aren't an asshole.”

 

“You've known me two days, give it time. The point is, you personally did not ask for this shit, so stop apologizing for doing it. I expect this level of upset if you stab me with a pen or something, but not for something you literally _did not do_.”

 

“Okay. I'll try.” It took some real concentration not to apologize for apologizing.

 

“That Pepito guy knows these two,” Johnny said, swiping his knuckles over his doodle-gangers.

 

“Todd does too,” Edgar said. “And then, did you two-”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny brushed some hair out of his face. “I didn't know him until I said that thing about his name – it was just like what I said to you, it just came out – and then suddenly I recognized him. He used to be younger. I think we were friends, too.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “They had no idea who I was. Even though I have the book, and the house, and these two” Edgar tapped the table near his doodle counterparts, “living in my mirror. I think it's more likely __I'm_ _ the NPC.”

 

“You _do_ say the same thing about being sorry and needing to help and make me happy over and over again, yeah.”

 

“Thanks, that helps,” Edgar deadpanned.

 

“I do what I can.”

 

This kind of vaguely insulting humor seemed to help Johnny out, so Edgar shrugged it off and continued trying to dissect their visit with Pepito. “So did you see _horns_?”

 

Johnny nodded and ran a hand through his hair.“Yeah, yeah. Until the end there, when Pepito did all that...” He raised his arms and mimed 'bigness', also possibly 'smoke' and 'terror'. “Until that, they were both scared of me .”

 

Edgar swallowed, and nodded, looking down at his feet hanging over the side of the booth's seat. “Yeah. Todd called you a crazy man.”

 

“That probably falls under the category of ' __awful shit previous me didn't want to remember__ _',_ huh?”

 

“Probably.”

 

This was not how he imagined his first days with people to be. He thought there would be more like what they had had in his house. Music and dancing around like idiots and watching television with macaroni. But this? This was turning out to be a little painful and, the longer he was knee deep in it, dangerous.

 

“Do you hear anything?” Johnny sounded so tired.

 

“Just the clock.”

 

“Just checking.”

 

“Are you going to tell me what that's about sometime?”

 

“You'll see. You'll hear it all too, eventually.”

 

“I hope so.”

 

Johnny sank into his seat and disappeared from view and Edgar felt a lot like doing the same. They – or at least Johnny – had been right about who to go to for more information, and yet now Edgar felt profoundly stupid for having gone and been scared out of his mind by a man drinking tea and eating ginger snaps.

 

Edgar sighed. “I hope those cookies weren't laced with anything.”

 

“I'm feeling kinda 'fruit of the underworld' about them, yeah.”

 

“I wonder if we'll be visible when we're dead.”

 

“ _Where can a dead man go? The question with an answer only dead men know.”_

 

Johnny sat up and ran his fingers over his drawings on the table. He looked up at Edgar, and then, smiling for the first time since standing in front of Pepito's house, finished the verse.

 

_“But I'm gonna bet they never really feel at home, if they spent a lifetime learning how to live in Rome.”_

 

Edgar finally felt like smiling back at him. Johnny picked up his headphones and hooked them back around his neck, then slid off the seat and got to his feet.

 

“Ready to go visit 'Agent Mothman'?”

 

If he was going to be tangled up in this stuff, Edgar was happy he was in it with Johnny.

 

“Let's go.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really loved adding Edgar to this part of the story and now that I've done it it's hard to believe I ever decided he shouldn't go. This does so many good things for him and for the internal logic of the thing. 
> 
> Johnny already knows how his key reacts to him before he ever visits Pepito in this version, which really just makes sense versus the way it was in the original. 
> 
> Edgar becomes aware of the start of a crush on Johnny here, which also makes me smile, because of course it does. But I'm happier with it here because it has felt more organic than him just sort of adoring Johnny from the start. Not that he wasn't fascinated or interested in something as unique as Johnny from the get go, but now that he's spending some time with him, Johnny's actual warped personality is really becoming endearing to Edgar and even with his limited experience, he knows that might be a problem for him.
> 
> I'd hoped to make Pepito a little scarier this time around, to make the experience of being with him in his house a bit more alarming than the original, and I think that's managed! I certainly liked Edgar and Johnny just sitting and trying to deconstruct and breathe afterwards, that was great to write through. This is sort of the start of them as a very unified team against all this supernatural junk since they've been through something significant together. I'm finding it hard to separate them ever because of the stuff they go through and that they're the only two people in on a lot of the stuff that's going on, it's a little dorky of me.
> 
> Songs are:
> 
> The Birthday Massacre - Video Kid (in roughly the same context as it was in the first version of SWAN)  
> Malcolm Lincoln - Siren
> 
> and Johnny quotes just a little bit of 
> 
> Nickle Creek - When In Rome
> 
> at Edgar while they're in the cafeteria. Which is so far off from the usual genre and style of a SWAN song, but I like that Johnny has access to, and perhaps even enjoys, a much larger band of music than we generally see him listening to. He'll reference several other songs that seem to be out of his genre comfort zone later on. 
> 
> When In Rome was also a song I heavily associated with Other!Edgar and Johnny, for anyone left who remembers that stuff, so I wanted to include it in SWAN proper somehow, even if just in one of Johnny's quotes.


	8. Am I Awake?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar and Johnny pay a visit to Dib, and then eat lunch with Devi, Tenna, and Jimmy.

No matter how strange and non-threatening Trenchcoat had been, Edgar was still a nervous to meet him again. As he and Johnny walked down the hallway that branched into the music and choir rooms, he caught himself wishing there was background music so he knew whether to expect to find Trenchcoat murdered or posed as the wacky comic relief.

 

Johnny was just barely audible next to him as they made the left to the music room. “ _I love Belarus... got it deep inside.”_

 

“ _Really_?”

 

“ _You_ were humming it.”

 

“Was I?”

 

Johnny pushed the music room door open. “I swear. Come on, we have a wackjob to question. We also have Jimmy next door,” he nodded toward the branch for the choir room, “so let's try to keep this quiet.”

 

“Are you not actually friends with any of those people, or...?”

 

Johnny ignored him.

 

There was no one in the music room when they stepped inside, just a bunch of chairs and music stands. Johnny leaned against the glass on the band director's office and peered inside, but that appeared empty too. He tried the handle, and the door was locked. Immediately, he went for his keys.

 

“Hello?” Edgar called into the empty room.

 

“Do you really think a guy like that answers to nameless hellos?”

 

“He was setting up cameras in broad daylight wearing the most conspicuous outfit possible, I feel like we're not really going to have to work to track him down if he's in here.”

 

Johnny dropped his keys and they clattered against his hip. “That's fair.”

 

Edgar opened a supply closet and was immediately buried in an avalanche of brooms, mops and broken music stands. Most of them clattered to the ground around him,

 

“Shhh!”

 

He tried to contain the armful of stands with little success. “It's not my fault, I-”

 

“Shh!”

 

Edgar stuffed what he could back into the closet and quickly shut the door before it all fell out again. Whatever had fallen on the floor, he left there. He turned around and saw Johnny walking slowly toward the back door. Johnny motioned for Edgar to follow and pointed behind a wall of filing cabinets. There was a soft whirring and beeping coming from behind them.

 

Johnny knocked on the filing cabinets with one knuckle. “Hey, ' _Agent Mothman'_. It's us again.”

 

One of the cabinet's drawers slid open. Edgar exchanged uncertain glances with Johnny before they both leaned slowly over it to look down inside. A small monitor flickered up at them, featuring Trenchcoat's face, though his eyes were obscured by some bright white glare on his glasses.

 

“Ah, it's you two. Just a second.”

 

The cabinet drawer slammed shut and Edgar saw Johnny's hand immediately snap to the pocket where he kept his knife.

 

There was some ugly heaving and straining from Trenchcoat, and then some scraping noises, and finally, one of the larger filing cabinets opened like a door, it's locked drawers actually a facade. Trenchcoat poked his head out.

 

“Come in, come in.”

 

Johnny fit through okay, though Edgar had to go sideways and hunch over a bit.

 

Behind the wall of cabinets, Trenchcoat had taken over a small forgotten computer lab and had turned the room into his own personal paranormal research station. There were official-looking reports, blurry photos, and connecting bits of string all pinned to a large yellowing map of the world on the far wall, and the rest of room was big bulky monitors, wires, and computer towers. Flickering screens showing strange radar pictures, progressive charts, and what appeared to be a ticker tape of UFO sightings mingled with mundane things like the school's cafeteria menu, a streaming video of some cats, and a what appeared to be an online journal.

 

“Welcome! I see you made it out alive.” Trenchcoat sat in a fancy reclining office chair in the center of all

 

Johnny elected not to go for his knife as he took in the relatively benign surroundings. “...Yes.”

 

“I can't believe you were even _inside!_ ” Trenchcoat gushed. “I've been trying for months to get at him.”

 

“Why?” Johnny poked at a keyboard beside him and the space screensaver on the accompanying monitor vanished to reveal a generic website about Big Foot.

 

Trenchcoat raised an eyebrow. “Why _not_? Have you _seen_ him? Well, heh, of course you have, you were just in there. But something's going on in there. The readings I get when I just _walk by_ are enough to be suspicious about, but I've been watching them for about a year now and I never see anyone go in or come out.”

 

“Did you watch us the whole time?” Edgar asked.

 

“Of course.” Trenchcoat twirled around and zipped to a monitor near the far wall. “I only got the footage of you guys going in, of course. Thanks to those curtains I didn't get what happened inside. But next time, if I could have you two wired...”

 

Johnny walked to the back to look at Trenchcoat's screen. He leaned over Trenchcoat's right shoulder, leaving room for Edgar on the left. “Did you get us coming back out?”

 

“Well, sort of. It was glitchy, but just a second.” He pushed his glasses back on his nose and held his hand out to Johnny. “It's Dib, by the way.”

 

Johnny stepped back from Dib's hand like it would burn him, and held his own hand over the key on his neck. “Johnny. That's Edgar.”

 

Edgar shook his hand just so Dib wouldn't feel bad for having offered it. “Hi there.”

 

“Nice to meet some like-minded people. We don't get many around here. Ah! Here we go.” He hit his spacebar and the grainy image showed Johnny and Edgar shoved onto the porch of Pepito's house with the door slamming behind them. Edgar watched himself and Johnny turn toward the door and then toward each other.

 

“I don't remember any of this,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny shook his head and wound his fingers around the cord on his neck. “Me neither. I remember being inside, getting my boots, and then just standing on the sidewalk...”

 

The door on the video opened again and out stepped Todd, who was trying to say something to Johnny, motioning between them. Edgar heard Johnny inhale sharply.

 

“I _definitely_ don't remember that,” Johnny said, leaning closer to the screen.

 

“We're going to need to make a log of everything you __do_ _ remember,” Dib said, launching three new programs. “I can cross reference it with what I've gathered so far.”

 

The video continued and showed the conversation with Todd continuing animatedly.

 

“Don't you have audio on these things?” Johnny reached out and slapped Dib's speakers. Dib swatted him away.

 

“This is sensitive equipment!” He shook his head, and muttered to himself a bit. “No, no audio, they're not close enough. They're zoomed in to the max as it is and since they're outdoors, they get all kinds of wind interference. I'm working on a program to filter that out, but it's slow moving since the undead uprising in the park last month.”

 

“Why not put them closer?” Edgar asked. Any other time, he'd question an undead uprising, but he was increasingly uncomfortable with what might have transpired at Pepito's and it somehow seemed larger than zombies on a playground.

 

On the screen, Pepito emerged from the house again, and grabbed Todd's arm. Todd tried to argue with him briefly but conceded the fight and walked back into the house, shaking his head.

 

“I can't _get_ them closer,” Dib said. “They malfunction if they get any closer than they are. Earth technology just doesn't work on that property. I was testing the camera limits when you two bumped into me today.”

 

“My headphones freaked out in there too,” Johnny said. 

 

Back in the video Pepito walked Johnny and Edgar down the stairs, both still in their socks, and then he flickered in front of them, between them and the camera. He placed a finger on each of their foreheads as they protested and then abruptly disappeared as Johnny and Edgar fell silent.

 

“Whoa!” Dib jumped back, but was clearly delighted. “Look at these readings! That wasn't a glitch, was it?!”

 

Edgar shook his head. “No, that's the first thing I remember about leaving there. We were just standing on the sidewalk after being in his house, and then, yeah, there we go, putting our shoes back on.”

 

Dib brought his three new applications to the front of the screen.

 

“Okay, tell me everything you saw.”

 

Johnny stepped back and crossed his arms. “I didn't agree to tell you anything.”

 

“Oh, _come on!”_ Dib gestured toward the screen. “I just let you watch this!”

 

“You didn't have to.” Johnny countered.

 

“What do you need to know?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny glared at him and Dib spun around in his chair to look pathetic and pitiable. “Whatever you've got, you never know what could be useful!”

 

“He doesn't have __anything_ _ _,”_ Johnny growled.

 

Edgar held up a hand and raised his eyebrows, pleading. _Please? Trust me?_

 

Johnny hunched his shoulders and his expression was twisted and sour, but he stayed quiet.

 

“Do you know their names?” Dib asked eagerly. “What are they doing in there? What did you talk about? Did any of it feel... evil? Alien, perhaps?”

 

Edgar counted off on his fingers. “Todd and Pepito, playing video games and eating cookies, keys and books, yes, and maybe.”

 

"And?"

 

"And what? That's all there was."

 

Dib frowned. _“Oh,_ __come on_ _ _!"_

 

“I swear. That's all I can remember.”

 

“How did you even get in?” Dib asked.

 

It was obvious that Johnny didn't want to share details, and Edgar didn't particularly want to talk about past lives or books or reflections with Dib. “Johnny has some keys, and so does Pepito. He's obviously a collector, we thought we'd ask where he picked them up. He invited us in, gave us some cookies, and then that's it. They probably wiped the rest of it. You saw what they did to us at the end.”

 

"What did he say about keys? Or about books? There might be a clue there somewhere."

 

Edgar shook his head.  "I think we're lucky to remember the cookies. He was kind of in a rush, we may have had a subpar brain wipe."

 

Johnny's sour expression melted and Edgar watched him slowly start smiling. It was hard not to smile back.

 

“You might,” Johnny said, twirling Dib's seat around to force him to face the screen. “want to compare how Pepito – the vanishing guy – looks at the end of the video you took of us, compared to how he looks in your others. I feel like he got... __spookier_ _ just before we left. You know, more evil and alien. ”

 

“Do you know any other people who do this stuff?” Edgar asked as Dib called up more video at Johnny's suggestion.

 

“None in person, just on the SE Forums.”

 

“Can any of them lip read?”

 

Dib pointed to the grainy video of Johnny and Edgar. “From _this?_ ” He shook his head. “I doubt it, but we'll try.”

 

“Great,” Johnny said, sliding around Dib's chair to stand with Edgar. “If you find anything out, let us know. If we remember more, we'll let __you_ _ know.”

 

Dib looked like he knew he was being played with, and Edgar worried this would all go very poorly, but then Dib sighed and opened a few more windows on his screen. “I'll see what I can do.”

 

“We'll see ourselves out,” Johnny said, offering one of his shallow bows as he backed toward the filing cabinets.

 

Dib shook his head and waved them away. “Go on, go on.” And then, quieter, “No one wants to do the heavy lifting in the paranormal, they just want to pose with the pictures for the paper...”

 

Edgar ducked through the filing cabinet after Johnny and neither of them said a word until they were through the music room and out in the hall again.

 

“So __wow_ _ , very good,” Johnny said once they stood out of earshot.

 

Edgar felt so light inside he might have been able to reach orbit. “Thanks.”

 

“I was planning just to tell him to fuck off, but you not only make him think he had useful information, you made him do work for us. I'm impressed.”

 

Reach orbit, and __scream_ _ _,_ perhaps.

 

“I'm glad you caught on.”

 

“Now I know what to expect of you. This is going to work out well.” He put his hands on his hips and just seemed generally pleased with everything, as though he hadn't been mind-wiped by a demon man an hour ago. “This is not what I bargained for when Devi told me they found you on the floor.”

 

“What __did_ _ you bargain for?”

 

Johnny held up a hand and ground his fingers against his thumb like scattering sand. “Crushing you into the dust.”

 

It would have been a little unsettling if he hadn't laughed afterward.

 

Unfortunately, Johnny's laughter attracted attention, and Jimmy emerged from around the corner a few seconds later.

 

“Hey!” he chirped.

 

Johnny was not pleased. “Oh. It's you.”

 

Jimmy took some visual inventory of Edgar head to toe and then proceeded to completely ignore that he was standing there. “How long are you letting that other guy tag along?”

 

“As long as I want. You don't have a monopoly on following me around.”

 

Jimmy gave Edgar a particularly vicious side-eye before continuing to ignore him and turning back to Johnny. “Well, we made progress in the choir room, in case you want to sit with us. We have room for one more.”

 

 _“'We' ?”_ Johnny crossed his arms. “Did you rope Devi into this too?”

 

 _“_ She came, but I actually wanted Tenna. She's a lot better at the haunted room thing.”

 

Johnny nodded. “Yeah, okay. So what did we get? Are they coming back?”

 

“Tonight sometime. But they'll be gone after that.”

 

“And how do you know?”

 

Jimmy practically glowed with enthusiasm. “It's a _bake sale.”_

 

Johnny's usual frosty animosity toward Jimmy vanished and he clasped his hands over his chest and looked skyward as though thanking some far off deity. “Fuck. Yes.”

 

“Come on, come on, there's still some of those marshmallow crispy things you like.”

 

Johnny actually sighed at the thought of them. “Those always taste better made by someone's mom than wrestled from a vending machine.”

 

Edgar watched Jimmy try to steer Johnny away and felt a strange twist in his chest. Fear that he'd suddenly be left alone again gripped him, though he knew he and Johnny still had all this Pepito stuff to figure out together and Johnny wasn't likely to leave it all to Dib and never see Edgar again.

 

Plus, on a purely logical level, most of Johnny's things were still in Edgar's house.

 

Half way down the hall, Johnny called behind him. “Are you coming, Edgar?”

 

Jimmy made no attempts to conceal a 'hmph'ing noise, but did not hurl any obvious insults.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming!”

 

 

The choir room had been completely reorganized from the last time Edgar saw it. There were tables everywhere now lined with food wrapped in little plastic bags with bows, and a bunch of poster boards decorated with school colors and various crudely drawn images of cheer leading paraphernalia were leaned against nearly every vertical surface. Balloons were attached to surfaces around the room seemingly at random.

 

At the center table in the elevated section originally designed for a seated choir sat Devi and Tenna, each with a massive plate of pastries and one large poster board on the table between them. Devi was drawing on it and taking mumbled-through-cookie suggestions from Tenna. What Jimmy had said about there only being room for one could not have been more wrong.

 

“Wow,” Edgar said, taking in the streamers and excessive use of glitter paints.

 

“Right?” Johnny grinned at him. “These are the best. Let's find you something to eat off of.”

 

“Here,” Jimmy said, thrusting a paper plate into Johnny's hands. “They have a ton.”

 

Edgar felt a little disappointed that he wouldn't be eating off of a CD today.

 

“Tenna also ordered lunch for the __four of us_ _ _,”_ Jimmy said sweetly. “We're getting Chinese.”

 

Johnny did not seem phased by Jimmy's outright hostility, so Edgar tried not to be either. Instead, he walked along the tables full of cupcakes, cookies, fudge, and candy and selected several for his plate. He was a little concerned that he felt no guilt at all doing this, but not concerned enough to leave the sweets where they were.

 

Edgar found a small cluster of chairs to sit in, but Johnny, plate piled several inches high with treats, wouldn't let him stay there long. He kicked Edgar's shoe on his way up to join Devi and Tenna.

 

“Come on, just sit with the rest of us. They're going to have to get used to you sometime.”

 

Devi looked up from her poster board with a marker in one hand and a cupcake in the other. “Hey, you asshole, there you are.”

 

Johnny held his hand over his heart and bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Lovely to see you, too.”

 

“Where have you been?”

 

Johnny joined her at her table in the center section of the room and Edgar somewhat reluctantly followed.

 

“I was talking to Edgar.”

 

Tenna grinned. “All night?”

 

“It's weird for us to lose track of you for that long,” Devi said, going back to her artwork. “Jimmy called me six times.”

 

“I did not!”

 

“He did,” Tenna said, crunching into a chocolate covered pretzel. “I was there.”

 

Edgar thought he'd try to jump in. “At Jimmy's, or...?”

 

The others (expect Johnny) jumped a little when he spoke and it became very clear they'd already forgotten Edgar was even there despite talking about him. There was a long silence before Johnny looked up from his tiny cherry cheesecake square.

 

“What? Are you guys too cool to talk to him or what?”

 

Tenna looked uncomfortable, but apologetic. “Um, I live with Devi.”

 

“Oh, okay. Sorry.” Edgar tried to smile and nod and just be suitable for these people, but he had a feeling it was going to be very hard to get into a group that was so tightly knit that they called each other 'asshole' as a form of friendly greeting.

 

Devi bit into some licorice. “So what had you two so occupied?”

 

Johnny motioned vaguely to the side of his head. “You know, brain stuff.”

 

Jimmy huffed at the other side of the table. “Like what? When I called you said you were standing around in his bathroom.”

 

Johnny threw one of Devi's markers at him.

 

“Nny! Come the fuck on! Throw your own shit at him.” She leaned across the table toward Jimmy. “Give me that.”

 

Jimmy retrieved the marker from the floor and slammed it on the table with a glare not at Devi, but at Edgar.

 

“I can show you what we were doing,” Edgar said. He set his plate down and dusted his hands off over it.

 

“Oh my,” Tenna said. “In __public_ _ _,_ even.”

 

“We're not public,” Jimmy said, stuffing most of cheese danish into his mouth.

 

Devi raised an eyebrow at Tenna.  "What are you even implying?"

 

Edgar swayed in his seat a bit. “Should I continue, or...?”

 

Tenna leaned forward on the table with great interest and Johnny seemed a little surprised, but didn't voice any particular objection.

 

“Look over there.” Edgar pointed across the room at the window. Even though it was midday, the windows had long ago been covered with a black film to prevent people from peering in, and so no light was coming through. Instead of real windows, they served as a crisp reflective surface. As always, Edgar's two extra reflections hovered in close around him.

 

He saw Tenna do several delighted double takes, but the other two looked more disturbed then entertained.

 

Devi frowned. “Wow, what the actual fuck. What is that?”

 

“It's the people I remember being.”

 

Tenna blinked. “Oh, wow, Nny isn't making all that up?”

 

Devi elbowed her and Johnny opened his mouth mid-chew at her.  She swatted at him and tried to hide her face behind her arm.

 

“Not unless my head is making it up with him,” Edgar said. He looked back across the table directly at Jimmy. “When you called, I was checking to see if Johnny could see them. I had no idea if it was just me.”

 

“And what were you planning to do if we couldn't see them?” Devi asked.

 

Edgar took a bite of a molasses cookie. “Look like an idiot.”

 

He heard Johnny laugh very quietly into his lemon bar and felt a stupid twinge of pride over it. And then Devi actually smiled at him. Tenna seemed easy enough to win over, especially if he could get Devi to like him. So the only trouble would be Jimmy.

 

Johnny wiped some powdered sugar on his shirt and got up to lean over Devi's poster board. “Oh, hey...” He sported a wide grin as he tried to turn himself upside down to see her work from the right angle.

 

 _“_ You can step around the table,” Devi said.

 

“It's okay, I can see it.”

 

Edgar leaned forward to see it as much as he could without standing. Devi had taken the sunshine-y and childish drawing of a cheerleader and given her tentacle limbs and a head that was erupting with candy.

 

Johnny pulled out the marker he'd used on the table in the cafeteria. “Can I?”

 

Devi rocked back in her chair and popped some pretzels in her mouth. She made a welcoming gesture and Johnny immediately got to scribbling on the poster board. Jimmy brought his chair around, put his elbows on the table and propped his chin up in his hands. His dreamy expression was a strange fit for him, and he was so obviously enchanted with Johnny that it might have been a performance.

 

Which meant that if Edgar got any more attached to Johnny, Jimmy was going to become a larger problem than he was now.

 

Johnny made swirl after swirl on the poster board, careful to avoid Devi's demon pinata cheerleader. It started so simply that Edgar thought it was just more doodling, but it began to take on some beautiful shapes almost without Edgar noticing. Soon there were twisted faces emerging from the tangle of swirls, strange alien-looking limbs, and what appeared to be disembodied rows of teeth.

 

Tenna stood up. “Hey, I'm gonna go get our food.”

 

Devi rocked her chair back to the ground. “Need help?”

 

“Nah. Be right back.”

 

She hopped down the platforms and continued skipping right out the choir room door.

 

Edgar looked up at Devi. “How do you order food?”

 

“Tenna's got a bit more control over how invisible she is,” Devi said. “She's good for stuff like the haunted choir room gag, but she can also give delivery people money.” She shrugged. “She also occasionally tries to the haunt the delivery people, but that usually means they drop our food, so we've tried to have her stop doing that.”

 

“Where does the money come from?”

 

Devi nodded toward Johnny, who was still so lost in his alien swirls he was using both hands. “This one can open the cash registers in the cafeteria, and all the vending machines.”

 

Jimmy looked up from watching Johnny. “Speaking of haunted choir room gag, we need to finish it properly.”

 

Devi leaned over to Tenna's empty plate and stole a small dough ball from her plate. “Whose turn is it?”

 

Jimmy smiled devilishly and pretended to look innocent. “Well, I think it's Nny's turn, but I thought since __Edgar_ _ seems so keen to get in...”

 

Johnny looked up from his drawing. “Don't be a dick, Jimmy.”

 

“It's proper, isn't it?”

 

“He doesn't know anything about it. It's not fair.”

 

“Um, hello?” Edgar waved. “I'm sitting right here, actually. What is this about?”

 

Johnny looked at him, suddenly quite serious. “Don't,” he warned.

 

“Is this the kind of thing I have to agree to do without knowing what it is?”

 

“It's fucked up and complicated,” Devi said. It wasn't really an explanation as that seemed to describe everything Edgar had seen in the last day or two.

 

“It's my turn.” Johnny's irritation was making his lines darker. “So why are we even still talking about this?”

 

“I think he should do it if he wants to stay with us!” Jimmy shouted.

 

Johnny slammed the marker on the table and Tenna's abandoned plate nearly went tipping off the side. “Then he's not staying with __us_ _ _,_ he's staying with __me_ _ _,_ now shut the fuck up about it!”

 

“Would everyone be happy if I just said I'd do it?”

 

Johnny whirled around to glare at him. “No.”

 

At the same time, Jimmy and Devi said, “Yes.”

 

Johnny practically snarled. “What the fuck, Devi, you too?”

 

Devi closed her eyes and put her hands up in a gesture of casual calming. “He's going to see it eventually if you're planning on keeping him, so he should probably just participate.”

 

The way Johnny looked at him, Edgar thought maybe he'd just been condemned.

 

“Fine,” Johnny said. “But I'm doing it with him.”

 

Immediately, Jimmy shot to his feet. “Then I'm doing it too!”

 

Johnny sighed angrily and stomped down to the floor level, waving for them to follow him. “Come on, then.”

 

Edgar glanced at Devi, but she just wiggled her fingers at him. “Have fun!”

 

“I have a feeling it's about to be the opposite of that.”

 

She grinned.

 

Clearly eager for this little adventure to play out, Jimmy was next to Johnny in seconds and grinning so much Edgar's cheeks hurt in sympathy.

 

Johnny pulled his knife out of his pocket and Edgar began actively regretting agreeing to this to game.

 

“The first time we tried to get someone to notice us as a group,” Johnny said, opening the knife and turning it over his hands, “it was because Jimmy was bleeding. He hit his head on a rock – or maybe we hit a rock with his head – and it was everywhere.  We were sort of panicking.”

 

This was definitely not going in a good direction.

 

“No one saw us, of course. But they saw the blood later.  And it's funny, you know, one of the things people are constantly saying about hauntings is that there's random blood on the walls.”

 

Edgar bit his lip. “I have a feeling I know where this is headed.”

 

Johnny tapped the very tip of the blade. “This is how we got any of the places we stay in. It helps to refresh it every once in a while. Especially if they get complacent enough to have a bake sale.”

 

Suddenly the caution tape surrounding Jimmy's trailer on the otherwise spotless parking lot made sense. Random unidentifiable and continuously regenerating human blood would definitely be creepy enough attached to a funeral home to just abandon the corner of the lot until it ceased looking like murder. If it ever did.

 

Jimmy was just beaming. “A nice handprint is traditional in here.”

 

“He can't cut his hand,” Johnny said, “he plays the keyboard.”

 

“Like I don't need my hands for a guitar!” Jimmy snapped. “I still did my hands the first time!”

 

“You play a guitar?” Edgar asked.

 

They both blinked at him, looked at each other, and then stared back at Edgar.

 

Johnny pointed at Edgar with the knife. _“_ _ _That's_ _ the question you're going to ask?”

 

Devi laughed from up above them.

 

Edgar shrugged. “I thought I'd try to get to know someone I'm apparently about to bleed with. How much blood are we talking about here?”

 

“Just enough to be noticed and unsettle someone later.” Johnny brought the knife up to his ear and casually cut himself somewhere in his hair toward the back of his head. “Head stuff bleeds a lot with little effort.” He passed the knife to Jimmy without even looking at him. “You end up with some scars, but it's not like anyone is going to see us, and usually, it's kind of hard to permanently hurt yourself.”

 

“Yeah, I - __Usually?”_ _

 

“Well, there's no accounting for Jimmy's existence in general.” He looked at his own hand, where his fingertips were already highlighted with red, and frowned. “This works better when I don't have so much hair.”

 

Jimmy cut into himself just as casually as Johnny, though his was on his forearm. He held the knife between his thumb and forefinger and offered it to Egdar as though daring him to take it.

 

“It's easier if you do it yourself,” Johnny said when Edgar hesitated. “You could try your shoulder if you don't care about your shirt. That bleeds pretty well too.” A small section of Johnny's hair was looking a little matted, and his hand had definitely accumulated enough blood to leave some sort of smear.

 

Edgar had had a small head injury when he was little, and there was still a scar at his hairline left over from the incident. It had definitely bled significantly, but he managed to not die, even as a confused ten year old, so he reasoned that this would probably be okay.

 

It took him much longer to purposefully hurt himself than it took Johnny and Jimmy. At first he just sort of scratched himself and tugged at his scalp, but he eventually managed a small cut. It'd been a long time since he'd been cut even accidentally. The sensation was a little shocking, and predictably unpleasant. Jimmy snorted mockingly when Edgar winced through the pain.

 

Edgar passed the knife back to Johnny. As worried as he'd been about Johnny having it before, he was much happier not having it himself or having it go back to Jimmy. The cut certainly bled, but he suspected he was not going to be able to handle getting more than a few finger prints out of it. Something told him Johnny wasn't going to insist on a whole hand print, and Jimmy was going to lose the battle if he fought for it.

 

Johnny smeared his hand on the door where the bake sale welcome sign hung, and Jimmy flung his arm at the floor near the food tables in order to leave a hand print in some drips. He ended up wiping his arm against the table itself.

 

Edgar had the tips of several fingers covered in blood and was at a loss for what to do with them until he caught sight of himself and his doubles in the blacked out windows.

 

“Oh, that's a good one,” Devi said approvingly from her perch as Edgar pressed his fingers to the glass several times. “They might not see that one immediately.”

 

He was oddly proud of himself. Disturbed and concerned, but proud.

 

Just then, the choir room door burst open and Tenna strolled in with two huge plastic bags and a distinct aroma of Lo Mein.

 

“Okay, let's have us some nood- Jesus _Christ,_ you guys! I leave for ten minutes and now everyone's fucking bleeding!”

 

“Relax,” Jimmy said, waving his bloody hand dismissively, “we're just being friendly.”

 

“And I hope sanitary. One day someone is going to get an infection and I am not going to feel even a little bit bad.”

 

“We'll note your lack of sympathy when the moment comes,” Johnny said. “I'm gonna go put my head in the sink.”

 

Tenna hauled the food up to Devi. “Yeah, please do.”

 

Edgar followed Johnny and Jimmy out of the choir room and down the hall to the girls' bathroom.

 

“I've never been in one of these.”

 

Jimmy turned on a sink and stuck his arm in it. “You've never been in a fucking bathroom?”

 

“I mean I've never gone in a girls' bathroom.”

 

Jimmy and Johnny both made a sort of uncomfortable non-committal, “Eh,” before Johnny put his head under the water of his sink. Edgar wondered, briefly how many scars Johnny had hidden under his hair before grabbing some soap and sticking his head under the running water too.

 

The water turned a kind of pink as it swirled by and the soap stung a little.

 

_Still the weirdest twenty-four hours of my life._

 

It was good to see that the rest of Johnny's pack of semi-feral teenagers wasn't as much like spooked deer as they'd been when Edgar first encountered them, but he honestly would have taken that over ritual blood sacrifice.

 

_Do I like Johnny enough, and do I want to know what's happening with Pepito enough, to deal with this kind of thing? What if the Johnny I was having so much fun with isn't really what Johnny is like at all? Have I just willingly joined a cult?_

 

A spray of water drops landed on his back and he picked his head up to see Johnny fluffing his hair back into shape with his fingers and flinging water around in the process. He got nearly nose to nose with his reflection in the mirror as he pressed some paper towels against his head. “I need a haircut.”

 

Jimmy was holding a small stack of paper towels against his arm. “I can do it.”

 

“No thanks.” Johnny looked across the sinks at Edgar. “You good?”

 

“I suppose. I'm just going to grab some towels.”

 

They looked ridiculous leaving the bathroom with bits of paper towels pressed against them, but Edgar had to concede when they returned to the choir room that even the small smears of blood they left were in fact unsettling and would probably do their intended job.

 

Jimmy scaled the elevated floor in long strides to rejoin Devi and Tenna and the food.

 

“We stopped actually cutting our hands for this when they were taking too long to heal,” Johnny said, answering a question that Edgar hadn't asked. “Jimmy and Devi like instruments, Devi and I like painting, Tenna sews shit I guess? So it isn't really practical.”

 

“Right, so only practical ritual bleeding. Got it.”

 

He expected Johnny to laugh, but instead he just stared at Edgar and was absolutely silent.

 

“Come eat this shit before it gets cold!” Tenna yelled. She shook a single takeout box in the air and set it down next to Johnny's plate of bakesale treats.

 

Edgar looked back to Johnny. “Sorry, I didn't mean to-”

 

“Get yourself another plate.”

 

“I-”

 

Johnny marched up to the table and opened the box Tenna had put in front of him. He poked at it with a fork while his other hand still held the paper towels to his head. Edgar returned to his seat next to Johnny with his empty extra plate and hoped he wasn't in for more pain. Devi and the others had already pulled food onto plates from their boxes, which apparently gave Johnny the idea that the boxes were free for the taking.

 

Devi nearly spit at him when he took her box. “Hey! You have your own!”

 

“I know.” He heaved two forkfulls of vegetables onto Edgar's plate and then did the same with the fried rice in his own box.

 

“Oh.” Edgar looked guiltily at Devi, who snatched her box back and angrily tucked it behind her arm.

 

Tenna tried to put hers in her lap before Johnny saw her, but Johnny only had to hold his hand out for her to surrender the box of Lo Mein. Johnny didn't even look up from throwing the noodles onto Edgar's plate to make the same demand of Jimmy.

 

“Spit in that food, Jimmy, and I rip your arm open.”

 

“It's okay, I'm good,” Edgar said.

 

“No you aren't, your head is bleeding.” Johnny returned Tenna's box and then motioned to Jimmy. Surprisingly, Jimmy offered up the box of orange chicken without even a glare.

 

A few pieces of chicken later, Edgar had a passable meal without really having to sacrifice anyone else's.

 

“There. We'll get five next time.” Johnny sat down to his food without another word. For the next thirty seconds, all Edgar could hear was chewing and the scrape of plastic forks against foam plates.

 

Tenna broke the awkward silence. “I'm going to go turn the music on.”

 

Devi took a resentful bite of her vegetables. “Thank you.”

 

“So you couldn't have been looking in mirrors all day,” Jimmy said, stabbing his fork with more force than necessary into a piece of chicken. “What else were you up _to?”_

 

Johnny didn't even look up. “I don't remember promising to report all my movements to anyone.”

 

 _“He was _just_ _ curious,” Devi said.

 

“He's __just_ _ not getting an answer.”

 

Edgar wished desperately that he'd been given a proper primer on this group. What they did and didn't know, what Johnny wanted to tell them, whether Jimmy was prone to attacking people in their sleep, that there would be blood involved in meeting them properly...

 

Some kind of buzzing noise erupted from the speakers on the wall, and then abruptly changed into what sounded like a garbled communication from space. It took him some time realize it was a long intro for a song.

 

Tenna returned a few seconds later and dug back into her noodles. “I just put on whatever was in there.”

 

Jimmy shrugged. "This'll work."  

 

Devi narrowed her eyes. "This better not be the CD with that awake song on it."

 

Tenna shrugged and went back to her noodles.

 

Despite Johnny's bitter silence otherwise, his keys made a tiny sound as he tapped his foot to the song's real opening. It was such a relief just to know that a hint of the Johnny he'd spent all day with was still in there. Edgar had hope that he'd be a bit more like he'd been in Edgar's house once things got comfortable with the others, but he had no way of knowing if comfortable would ever happen.

 

At first, they listened to the sounds of chewing and Johnny's keys accompanying the song.

 

_“Control yourself_

_take only what you need from it_

_a family of trees wanting_

_to be haunted”_

 

And then Edgar saw them all reacting to it.  Jimmy began whistling, and Devi was tapping softy along with one hand while finishing her vegetables with the other. Tenna was bobbing her head.

 

 

_“The water is warm,_

_but it's sending me shivers._

_A baby is born,_

_crying out for attention._

 

_Memories fade,_

_like looking through a fogged mirror._

_Decisions to decisions are made and not bought_

_But I thought,_

_this wouldn't hurt a lot._

_I guess not.”_

 

Jimmy actually started singing first. He wasn't fantastic, but he was not terrible.

 

_“Control yourself._

_Take only what you need from it._

_A family of trees wanting_

_to be haunted...”_

 

Devi and Tenna joined in too. Johnny looked up from picking at his food and finally smiled at them again before he sang along too. He removed the paper towels from his head and elbowed Edgar. The look he'd had when they first sang about Belarus was back. __Sing with me, dammit._ _

 

_“Control yourself._

_Take only what you need from it._

_A family of trees wanting_

_to be haunted...”_

 

It was different here, though, than it had been in his house.  Edgar knew he couldn't really sing, and he was concerned the others would react not just to the quality of his singing, but that he was doing it at all.  The lines repeated over and over and Johnny glanced at Edgar every time it started again, trying to cue him, encourage him, something.  And Edgar wanted to do whatever would make Johnny happy, but this wasn't dancing in his living room.

 

As one song faded and another began, Tenna pushed all her food out of the way and leaned over Devi's shoulder, nearly singing into her face.

 

“ Am I awake?”

 

“Aw, Tenna, no...”

 

_“What time is it?”_

 

Jimmy leaned in too, the cut on his arm now exposed and red, but not bleeding. He sang with Tenna, both of them beaming in smug satisfaction.

 

_“When I get through this day_

_Can someone tell me how_

_And how much longer now”_

 

“ No,” Devi said. “I hate you both.”

 

Johnny stood up and dropped his elbows on the table right over where Devi had been eating and smiled at her, chin in his hands, only a few inches from her face. All three of them sang at her while she very clearly held back a torrent of rage.

 

_“Am I awake?”_

 

Tenna began laughing so hard she snorted a little and Jimmy began this strange little exaggerated mime with the paper cup on the table in front of him while Johnny sang with some intense mock seriousness.

 

_“The coffee's cold, did I forget to drink it yet?_

_Did I forget?”_

 

Johnny reached over and interrupted Jimmy's exaggerated acting to bap the cup up and out of his hands, covering Jimmy in water. He sang mockingly in Jimmy's direction.

 

_“My clothes are wet I don't remember drinking it”_

 

Jimmy sang right through giving Johnny a sour look, and Devi had decided her apparent hatred of the song was less than her enjoyment of Jimmy's suffering and she sang the song right along with him.

 

_“When I get through this part_

_will the next one be the same?_

_Will I be wondering_

_if I'm awake?”_ _  
_

 

Edgar watched Tenna mime ' _these are not the clothes I had on when I went to bed_ ' with a kind of detached amusement, and then she reached toward him and plucked a strand of hair out of his head for ' _and something else besides my hair is growing from my head_ '.

 

“Augh, _careful_ , I just cut my head open for you people!”

 

Devi absolutely cackled and Jimmy threw his empty paper cup at Edgar.

 

Johnny hit Edgar's arm with the back of his hand. “Come on, step it up, you were doing so good.”

 

_“Am I awake?”_

 

Edgar nodded. “Sorry. Got it.”

 

And so he sung along. He didn't really know these people, he didn't understand what had happened between them all that required a very serious commitment to bleeding, and he certainly wasn't a singer.  But he sang.

 

_“Is it that time again?_

_Wasn't it already then?_

_So does it have to be_

_The time it was again?_

_When I get through the day_

_Can't someone tell me how_

_And how much longer now_

 

_Am I awake?”_

 

The group exchanged abuse like normal people exchanged casual handshakes, though Edgar wasn't quite sure enough to deliver any himself. He threw things back when they were thrown at him, and he was able to adjust to theatrical singing and laughing when something was done to him.

 

They sang through two more songs, making a giant mockery of the words and themselves.  Johnny, it turned out, could direct the others the same way – or perhaps even more than – he could direct Edgar. Even Devi, who Edgar thought would be too willful to respond to Johnny's cues, responded to him and did a perfect back and forth exchange with him when one song called for it. Perhaps more surprising was that Jimmy and Tenna didn't interrupt it.

 

Jimmy stood up when Johnny motioned for him, and sang with him in response to cues Edgar couldn't even see. Tenna jumped in as backup in response to only a glance. Edgar caught glimpses of Johnny's eyes and found himself singing along to exactly what Johnny wanted.

 

He'd thought that he had some kind of connection with Johnny, but it was becoming clear that Johnny had it with everyone he knew. He sang with the others with an intimacy that felt very strange for someone who did not like being touched. He avoided touch for the most part, but he and Devi sang so close to each other's faces while she pounded on the table that Edgar thought they'd kiss. Jimmy leaned against Johnny's shoulder and instead of Jimmy losing that arm, they sang such aggressive eye contact that Edgar was certain someone's shirt was going to be removed at any second. Even Tenna had an apparently pre-established routine with Johnny, though it was far more playful than the strangely charged connections he had with Devi and Jimmy.

 

Edgar didn't know what to expect when Johnny slid closer to him. He suspected that even if it was playing like Tenna, it would still feel to him more like what he'd seen with Devi. Johnny leaned close and sang with his head hovering just over Edgar's shoulder and Edgar thought he could feel Jimmy cursing him. Edgar leaned toward Johnny, startling him for a second, and then he broke into a wide grin.

 

The next thing he knew he and Johnny were singing some nonsense in a language he didn't know, back to back, when Jimmy decided he wanted to join in too. Tenna, either missing that Jimmy was trying to be difficult or trying to lessen his impact, ran around the table to join them, dragging Devi along. They sang in a funny little circle, shoulders and heads pressed against each other, half-dancing, half-screaming. Johnny looked at him in the last few seconds of the song and Edgar thought his heart would stop. When the others broke from the circle on the last word, Edgar stood frozen, his heart threatening to break out of his ribcage.

 

The next song up was instrumental, which he hoped would give him a break. Thankfully, the others seemed to share his sentiment and returned to their seats at the table. Edgar hardly remembered ever standing up.

 

“Whew.” He touched the cut on his head gingerly, hoping it hadn't reopened. It stung a little but there was thankfully no blood.

 

Devi held out her hand from across the table. “You'll do for now,” she said.

 

Edgar picked up his hand slowly, hoping to find some alternate use for it in case this was not an offer of a handshake. She grabbed his hand when he took too long.

 

“I suspect if you spent all night with Nny and weren't reduced to a pile of jelly and teeth this morning that you must not be _awful.”_

 

“Thanks.”

 

She let go of his hand. “It was still really dumb of you to chase after him, though.”

 

“It might make a nice novel if he lives through it,” Tenna said. She reached out and gently patted his forehead. Edgar was forced to assume it was approval.

 

“I wasn't really prepared for any of this,” Edgar admitted.

 

“I was getting to that part,” Johnny said with a shrug. “You're doing okay with no background information, though.”

 

Jimmy frowned. “No background information? What did you take a whole day to explain to him then?”

 

“Stuff you evidently don't have room in your brain for.” Jimmy glared back at him.

 

So much for the strange feeling of group unity.

 

Devi leaned back in her chair. “So what did you find out? Anything good?”

 

“A lot of shit,” Johnny said. “But it's little shit. Driving cars and conversations and stuff. We were friends before. And I had to teach him to hear.”

 

Tenna put her chin in her hands and blinked cartoonishly up at Edgar. “Ooooh, did you have _fun_?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He smiled at her, and then there was a very present pause as Edgar realized that aside from Johnny, the whole group was looking at him, squinting like they were trying to see through him.

 

“He hasn't gotten that far yet,” Johnny said, and the others all relaxed instantly.

 

“What haven't I gotten to?”

 

“The other songs I told you about. The ones you can't keep in your head.”

 

“Oh.” He looked at the others, hoping he wasn't missing anything. “Is that something you can teach me?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“I see. So...?”

 

Tenna grinned at him. “So are you ready to spend _every day_ with us until you do?”

 

He looked at the others, waiting for it be a joke. “Really?”

 

Johnny smiled at him, not the strange hostile smile he used with Jimmy, but a smile like the one he'd had when he was teaching Edgar to hear music in his head. The smile he had when presented with ridiculous music or a blank bit of poster board. The smile Edgar liked. “Really. I'm going to get you caught up on all this, show you around, and then you're stuck with us. You okay with that?”

 

Since yesterday, Edgar had remembered flashes of past lives, realized he could drive, had a dance party, heard dozens of songs sitting in his own head, showed someone else his three reflections, discovered he had a possessed book in his house, found suspicious boxes in his basement, quieted an apparent anxiety attack, ate Pop-Tarts, witnessed a magic key, had been mind-wiped by some sort of demon, met a panicky paranormal investigator, stole food from a bake sale, and cut his own head open to make a blood sacrifice in an abandoned choir room.

 

_“Absolutely.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was so wild for me, this is a chapter of entirely new stuff. There never got to be a visit to Dib before, and around this point in the original story, I just skipped a lot of Edgar learning to blend with the others. There's more material like this coming, because it's really great to go through. Edgar being less afraid makes integrating with the others easier, too. 
> 
> The group bleeding on things is part of them just being weirder, scarier people from the get go. I wanted the story to show more of this group before things get heavier or tenser, because you should see how closely bonded they are to make all the things that happen to them later really matter. I love writing them all interacting, I'm really glad to do this stuff. This was the kind of stuff I used to say I wanted to write all the time once I was done with SWAN, and even mid-ISH. There was always some regret in jumping ahead too much, too fast. There will still have to be some jumping, but it'll be smaller jumps this time around, and it should feel better to read it. 
> 
> Still very much in love with Johnny and Edgar, supernatural mystery team. The start of the unexpected but very fun bond between Tenna and Jimmy starts here as well. Tenna is definitely less of a satellite this time around, and I'm delighted about it, because she's incredible fun. 
> 
> The songs this time are: 
> 
> MGMT - Kids  
> They Might Be Giants - Am I Awake 
> 
> I want to say "Am I Awake" is the 'original' song for this bit, but only a line or two of this song appeared in the original SWAN. I thought that was a tragedy, so it gets to be heavily featured this time around. I also really enjoyed playing a song called 'Kids' after these people had just bled on things.


	9. Above All the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar gets a tour of the school at night.

A few hours later, the bake sale committee returned talking of just collecting themselves for the night and getting a fresh start in the morning and found their food reduced to crumbs and various surfaces covered in blood. They telephoned some police officers who wrapped the room in caution tape like gift wrap for a glittery and gruesome present. Edgar and the others sat on top of the filing cabinets in the back of the room and just watched as samples were taken of all the blood.

 

Jimmy cracked open his fortune cookie, and shook his head, smiling at the forensics team. “The best part about that is that when they test all that blood, they're going to see it's the same people again.”

 

Johnny smiled fondly at the officers and popped part of a fortune cookie in his mouth. “That's my favorite part. As far as they know, there's a pack of assholes just running around the city, bleeding on everything they love for shits and giggles.”

 

“That is _literally_ what is happening, though,” Tenna said.

 

“Yeah, but the part they don't know is that they'll never find us. We could stand over them screaming. We could probably bleed on them.”

 

Jimmy's eyes lit up. “Oh, __my god._ _ _”_

 

Devi shook her head and crunched into her cookie. “You have _got_ to stop giving him ideas, Nny.”

 

Edgar chewed his cookie thoughtfully. “You really think they wouldn't notice if we went up to them and bled on them? Really? I always thought I was a little more visible than that.”

 

“We can have Tenna do it, then,” Johnny said. “She hasn't bled yet today and she's variably visible.”

 

Tenna leaned forward and threw the wrapper from her fortune cookie at Johnny's face. “Whoa, whoa, time out. It was Jimmy's stupid fucking idea, make him do it.”

 

Devi pushed Tenna back against the wall. “Are we seriously talking about fucking bleeding on people?!”

 

“It was just an idea,” Jimmy grumbled. “Calm down.”

 

Tenna seemed to forget the conversation instantly. “Oh, oh, guys, guys, guys! Read your fortunes!”

 

Johnny leaned over Edgar's shoulder. “She's going to tell you that you need to-”

 

“You have to read them with 'in bed' on the end!”

 

“That.”

 

Edgar unfolded his fortune from the crumbled bits of the other half of the cookie in his hand.

 

Tenna held hers in front of her like it was a royal decree. “You have a true friendly spirit in bed!”

 

Devi shook her head, but looked at her own fortune and, sighing, read, “You are very skilled at influencing people... in bed.”

 

Jimmy next, and he cleared his throat before reading, “Your sense of justice is great in bed.”

 

Johnny turned his fortune over in his hand once. “Bad luck and extreme misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity. In bed.”

 

Tenna's blinks were nearly audible. The others stared at him, wide-eyed.

 

“You guys are no fun,” he said. He flipped the fortune and read, “You will soon embark on a great journey in bed.”

 

All eyes turned to Edgar, and he wished he had something better to offer. “You like Chinese food in bed.”

 

Jimmy reclined against the wall, and made a 'forget you' wave with his hands. “Oh, shut up.”

 

“No, it seriously says, 'You like Chinese food.'”

 

Johnny took the fortune from him. “It does.”

 

Devi reached over Jimmy's lap to take the fortune from Johnny and showed it to Tenna. “Wow.”

 

Jimmy leaned forward and peered into Devi's hand. “Huh.”

 

“I like the straightforwardness of it,” Johnny said. “There's not a lot that can go wrong in a ' _I have Chinese food and am in bed '_ scenario.”

 

The forensics team began talking about packing up and heading back to the lab, and the voice of the last of the crying cheerleader volunteers standing outside faded as they were escorted into police cars to be taken home.

 

Devi dusted off her hands and heaved her large bag of leftovers from the bake sale over her shoulder. “Well, I think I'm going to call it a night and go home with the blood guys and the cheerleader. See you guys tomorrow?” She gave Johnny a pointed look.

 

Johnny waved her off dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, eventually.”

 

Devi jumped from the cabinets and Tenna followed after her. “See you guys!” Tenna squeaked her little skeleton toy at them. “Call me if you bleed on anyone, Jimmy.”

 

Jimmy gave her a solemn nod. “Of course.”

 

On their way out, Devi kicked a few of the plastic numbers that had been set down to aid the police photography and Tenna spit on the floor.

 

“Ten, that's _hideous._ _”_

 

“They bled on the fucking floor, Devi, don't even talk to me.”

 

The door slammed behind them and forensics team scuttled out in an exaggerated terrified hurry, settling the room into silence.

 

_I wonder if I should volunteer to go._

 

However, Johnny solved Edgar's problem for him and slid off the cabinets himself.

 

“I'm taking Edgar on the tour. I'll see you tomorrow, Jimmy.”

 

Jimmy glanced at Edgar and then jumped down next to Johnny. “Can't I go too?”

 

“What __is_ _ this with you?” He looked Jimmy up and down with visible disgust. “You're clingy as fuck today.”

 

He tried to grab Johnny's arm and Johnny hissed away from him. “I'm just- I thought we were- Oh, come on, he's just out of nowhere!”

 

“So were _you_ _._ I don't remember Devi having a fit over it. Calm down and go the fuck home. _I'll see you tomorrow_ _.”_

 

Jimmy glared up at Edgar and looked like he might spit in his face. Then he abruptly kicked a chair out of his way and stormed out the back door.

 

Johnny turned back to Edgar when the echo of the door faded out. “Well. That was cheery.”

 

Edgar jumped down from the cabinets and noted from the pain in his ankles that his shoes were not great shock absorbers. “Is he always like that?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Pretty much. It's usually not that aggressive, though.”

 

“Can you tell me what's going on with them? You didn't tell them anything about the key, or the book, or the basement, or Pepito or anything. I thought...”

 

Johnny sighed. “Yeah. They don't need to hear about it yet.”

 

“You don't think they could help?”

 

“Not yet. I want to know more about it before I get them all worked up over it.”

 

Edgar leaned back against the cabinets. He was thrilled to get to spend more time with Johnny, but was a little worried about what would change now that he'd met the others.

 

“Can _I_ help you figure more out, then?”

 

Johnny twirled the key between his fingers. “You're probably the only one who can, right now.”

 

“What did that do when you first found it?”

 

Johnny rubbed the key between his finger and thumb. “I was in the hall. I stopped to tie my boots, I was talking to myself, and then the whole key ring just went sailing down the hallway when I said my name.”

 

It felt weirdly personal to make his next request, but Edgar took a step forward and asked, “Can I see it?”

 

“Heh. Well, I would, but...”

 

Edgar held up his hands. “It's fine. Personal stuff, personal space, I get it.”

 

“Actually, I can't take it off.”

 

“Is this symbolic, or just stuck, or...?”

 

Johnny smiled weakly. “It's _just stuck_ like your basement is _just storage._ I can't undo the knot, I can't cut the cord with anything.”

 

Edgar got a little closer, but struggled with how much distance was necessary for Johnny to be comfortable. When he wasn't singing with people, Johnny had such a wide sphere of personal space and Edgar wasn't good at figuring out where the boundaries were just yet. Thankfully, however, Johnny could read Edgar very well.

 

“It's okay, come on.” He waved Edgar closer with a few fingers and bowed his head so Edgar could see the back of his neck. “You can look. Try to undo it, if you want.”

 

The cord the key was tied to was a long red bit of leathery suede. The knot looked basic and uncomplicated, but secure. “You sure?”

 

“Yeah, go ahead.”

 

Despite being given permission to get this close, Edgar still did his best not to touch any skin. He pulled at what looked like an obvious part of the knot, but no matter how much he pulled, he couldn't pull the end of the cord through. He tried pushing the ends into the knot to loosen it, but nothing happened. When he found one loop that looked a sure thing and tugged it free, it seemed to just retighten itself behind his fingers. The knot began looking the same from all angles, and he followed one end of the cord around in what looked like an infinite loop.

 

Edgar dropped the cord back against Johnny's neck and the knot looked exactly as it had when he'd picked it up.

 

“I assume you used something insane to try to cut it?”

 

Johnny picked his head up. “I paid a visit to the wood shop, yeah.”

 

“Wow.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Pepito didn't give you the cord, did he?”

 

“No, that was already mine. It was just a normal piece of junk as far as I know. I just put the key on it.”

 

Edgar stepped around Johnny and motioned toward his neck. “Can I look at the key?”

 

Johnny hesitated, and Edgar wasn't sure he'd ever seen him do that, but he nodded. “Okay.”

 

The key was cold when Edgar touched it, but was otherwise extremely mundane.  It was dark, dull, unpainted metal, with nothing distinct at all about it. No hallmark, no stamp, no carving, embossing, or decoration. Even the part that would have actually unlocked something was just a single tooth, or flag, or whatever the functional part of keys were. It looked almost fake, like there couldn't possibly be a real lock that used this that would be in any way secure.

 

He looked up from the key and saw Johnny standing with his eyes closed. Suddenly, he felt entirely too close and dropped the key. Johnny's eyes fluttered open and Edgar could have sworn he'd never seen anyone just blink so long at someone else.

 

“It... it looks really normal,” Edgar said, finally.

 

“Yeah, that's what I thought. I sort of expected it to have a skull or an eye on it or something. Or some Illuminati bullshit, you know?” Johnny seemed to think nothing of closed eyes and long periods of blinking and continued as though nothing had happened. So maybe nothing did.

 

Edgar stepped back and took a deep breath. “Right. So what's it trying to do?”

 

“I don't know. I mean, the imagery is pretty obvious, right? There's probably a lock that this goes to. But I tied it to my neck before I thought to just follow it down the street saying my own name.”

 

“You could still do that, though.”

 

Johnny gripped the key tightly and looked at the window into his office. Edgar followed his gaze. All three of Edgar and one extremely hesitant Johnny looked out at them.

 

“Why haven't you?” Edgar said softly.

 

“I didn't have a good feeling about it. I have less of a good feeling now.”

 

“You said you wanted to know.”

 

“I say a lot of dumb shit.”

 

“I'll go with you, if you want.”

 

Johnny released his death grip on the necklace and looked up at Edgar. “If you had to guess, where would you think it would lead?”

 

Edgar tried to smile, but even in the window he just looked like he was in pain. “Pepito.”

 

Johnny turned toward the double doors leading into the hall. “Come on. We can add a stop on your tour.”

 

Johnny led Edgar down the hall and to the doors they'd unlocked when they'd fled Pepito's front yard. He didn't go through the doors, just hovered in front of one of them and wrapped his hands around the metal bar across the center of it.

 

Edgar looked though the doors with him. They could see across the street and right onto Pepito's porch.

 

Johnny exhaled loudly. “Johnny,” he said. Edgar watched the key tug forward against Johnny's neck. It fell back against Johnny after a moment or two of hovering in the air pointed directly toward Pepito's house.

 

“Could it be something beyond that or-”

 

“Come on, Edgar. You're smarter than that.” Johnny tucked the key into his shirt and shook his head. “It practically jumped into Pepito's face when he called me 'kid' on the porch and I corrected him.  It's him.  Or his house or something.  This key reacts with my name to his house. I don't think it's me your book is suspicious of, it's him. I'm just kind of caught in the supernatural shrapnel.”

 

“My basement doesn't have anything to do with him.” _As though being reassured that he was still part of the supernatural fabric of fuckery was what Johnny needed._

_“_ That we know of.”

 

“Should we go back over there?” Edgar hated that he even asked the question.

 

“And risk being fucking _mind wiped_ again to say _what_ _?”_

 

Edgar shook his head. “I don't know. It just seems unfair that it's clearly him with all the answers and he's just...” Edgar motioned helplessly toward Pepito's house. “...sitting so close we could throw something and hit him.”

 

“We _could_ hit him if I could get to the roof.”

 

 _“_ You don't have a key for that?”

 

Johnny turned and smiled at him. It was amazing how much better things felt as long as Johnny was smiling. “I haven't found the right one yet.”

 

Edgar very cautiously smiled back. “Can we try?”

 

“We'll add it to your tour.”

 

 

 

The school had so few windows that it grew very dark very quickly inside, even if there were still hints of light outside. The first stop was the mounted wolverine mascot on display behind a locked glass panel near the ceiling across the hall from the hallway to the choir room. Edgar had never really noticed it before, though he also hadn't spent much time in this particular hallway. The gym was down this way, plus a lot of doors to supply closets and boiler rooms, so he'd never had a reason or way to enter most of what was down here.

 

“So this is Shmee, the Wolverine.”

 

“That's an interesting name.  Did you name him?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “It just kind of felt right for some reason. Anyway, we give him all our cookie fortunes.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out all the fortunes from their meal.

 

“Wait, how did you even get those?”

 

Johnny looked from the floor and then back up to the wolverine. “I usually do this with Devi. How much weight do you think you can lift?”

 

Edgar blinked. “I think I've missed a key part of this conversation.”

 

Johnny pointed to the wolverine - “It's up there."  - and then between himself and Edgar. "We're down here.”

 

“You- you want me to lift you up there?”

 

“Yeah.” He unhooked his key ring from his belt loop and flipped through the jumble of keys until he had a tiny silver one. He held the fortunes up in one hand the the key in the other, his arms up at ridiculous right angles. “I've got the key ready and everything.”

 

“And what if I can't hold you up?”

 

“Then this is the second time in as many days that we fall doing something stupid together, I guess.”

 

Edgar looked at the very thick wooden benches along the wall under the wolverine and assumed they'd be sturdy enough. “You said _Devi_ usually does this?”

 

“Yeah, she could pick me up and throw me if she really wanted to.”

 

“I don't doubt it.” Devi was not a particularly strong-looking girl, but she was very serious and Edgar figured she was probably fueled by some sort of burning core of inner rage. “Okay, let's try.”

 

There was an unavoidable sort of awkward when Edgar realized he really didn't know how to best go about doing this. This was touch Johnny permitted, and had even suggested, so that wasn't the issue so much as just how to hoist a whole person most efficiently without being creepy.

 

Edgar bent his knees and awkwardly bounced a little, unsure of how to even begin. “Um, how does she usually do this? I've only ever lifted boxes.”

 

“Sort of hoist around my legs, I guess? I can brace against your shoulder? I don't know, she just sort of does it. You don't fuck with Devi, you just adapt.”

 

“Okay, then you can learn to adapt to me fucking this up.”

 

Edgar ended up with his face pressed into Johnny's stomach, but managed to hoist him high enough for him to reach the Shmee The Wolverine's display case. Smashed against him like this, Edgar could feel that Johnny was even bonier than he appeared, and even weighed a lot less than Edgar suspected he should. The keys were probably adding a significant amount to his weight. Thus, Johnny wasn't even that hard to hold up, just awkward.

 

“Allllmost got it, hold on.”

 

“Okay,” Edgar puffed into his shirt. From his vantage point, Edgar couldn't see much but Johnny's shirt and part of his neck and had no idea what stage of feeding cookie fortunes to a piece of taxidermy they were even on. He _could_ hear Johnny's breathing and heart beat, though. He'd seen people check for these on TV before and had wondered if they really sounded that way, and, occasionally, he'd wondered if they were even real.

 

“Oh, shit,” Johnny said suddenly. He stretched upward and nearly toppled both of them, sending Edgar back a step and Johnny flailing around before digging into Edgar's shoulders.

 

“Fuck, sorry,” Johnny said, panting. “I'm gonna try it again, just slower. Ready?”

 

“Yeah. Are you almost done?”

 

“Yeah, one just fell out, hang on.”

 

Johnny twisted like some kind of extra bony snake. Edgar heard his keys rattle, and the glass from the case swing around. There was metallic clicking and fussing while Johnny fought with the lock. “Aaannnnd... Got it! We're good!”

 

Johnny dropped his hands and gripped Edgar's shoulder while he was awkwardly dropped to the ground. For a few seconds after Johnny's feet touched the bench, his hands stayed on Edgar's shoulders and he craned his neck to see the floor over his own arms. Then, he seemed satisfied that he was on solid ground and threw his arms out to his sides like he'd just stuck a gymnastic dismount or done a circus trick.

 

“Ta-daaa!”

 

Edgar laughed and looked up at the Wolverine.

 

“So how did that start?”

 

Johnny jumped down from the bench. “Tenna said the fortunes don't come true unless you eat them.”

 

“That girl has a lot of weird ideas about fortunes.”

 

“Well, she's the only one that can get them, so we figured we'd indulge her.” He pointed down the hall toward the gym and all the doors Edgar could never go in before. “Down here.”

 

Edgar followed him down the hall and Johnny continued his story.

 

“We really didn't want to eat paper, so we thought we'd find something that could eat them for us. That's when we remembered the school mascot.”

 

“And do they come true?”

 

Johnny twirled his keyring as they approached one set of the doors to the gym. “Well, I'm not sure what to think about 'You like Chinese Food,' but perhaps Shmee is destined for embarking on a grand adventure in bed soon.”

 

He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered through the tiny windows in the gym doors. “Oh, it's still kinda light out. Well, we'll see what we can do.” He stepped away from the door and flipped through his keys until he pulled out a small gold key that matched the chain and padlock looped through the door handles.

 

“Don't let me forget to put these back when we leave,” he said as the chains fell to the floor. “If they think they're being broken into, they'll replace them, and it takes ages to steal the new ones.”

 

Edgar pulled one of the doors open. “That happened before?”

 

“Yeah, with the vending machines.” Johnny pulled the door on his side open and kicked it until it stuck in an open position. “And if you want something to eat in here after school hours, your options are peanut butter in a paint can from the cafeteria, or what ever is in the vending machine. I'm not a huge fan of Twinkies, but I can tell you they're made of more actual food than that peanut butter. I stole a copy of the new vending keys eventually, but I re-lock everything now.”

 

The gym was bigger than he'd remembered, with all but one set of the old wooden bleachers retracted flat against the wall.  Johnny made a long and deliberate black scuff on the polished floor.  It squeaked and echoed back to them two or three times before fading.

 

Edgar gazed to the ceiling at the skylights and all the industrial piping and wires used to raise and lower scoreboards and nets. “What do you do in here?”

 

“A lot of what you're doing now, though not it's not a good time for it yet. Come on, I have something for you to do.” He tilted his head toward the one section of actual bleachers and Edgar followed him, quickly realizing they were going underneath them.

 

The bleachers were made to be extended with another set pushed right up beside them, so one side of the whole structure was open to the inner workings of the extension mechanism, while the other had an extendable 'wall' piece. The idea being that once the two halves were pushed together, it would keep people from doing exactly what Edgar and Johnny were about to do.

 

It was a dark web of metal support beams inside, with a healthy layer of discarded gum pressed under the seating for the first six inches of the underside. Johnny navigated it like a spider, but Edgar slammed his ankle into a metal bar more than once in his attempt to follow.

 

“Fuck, ow.”

 

“You are _ridiculously_ pain-prone.”

 

“For the record, all the pain I've experienced in the last twenty four hours is because of you.”

 

Johnny's keys stopped making noise.

 

“Nny?”

 

Nothing.

 

“Hey, where are you? I was kidding, it's fine.”

 

Suddenly, a bright orange light flooded the space. The lattice of brown metal extended at least thirty feet up at its highest point, casting shadows on the unvarnished wooden underside of the seating. In front of him stood Johnny with a small lighter, and just behind Johnny was the inside wall of the bleachers covered like an ancient cave wall with sprawling graffiti.

 

Edgar ducked through the metal work, drawn to the scribble on the wall. The closer he got, the more he could make out.

 

Tenna's name, with a little skeleton head drawn next to it.

 

Devi, the 'I' dotted with an x.

 

JiMmy, with the middle M capitalized.

 

And NNY, underlined in three different colors and painted over with some glitter.

 

'Mmy loves you!' 'Devi hates you.' 'Talk to Spooky!' 'The answer is 2!' 'Fuck snow!' 'I am the lord of pigeons' 'Hail Pizza!' 'Up and Over'

 

A list of places in the school, many of them crossed out. One of the few remaining un-crossed was 'ROOF'.

 

Other people's names and initials, also scribbled over.

 

A tally showing that Jimmy had received, if this list was current, and total of 23 scars from Johnny since meeting him.

 

'Smile Like You Mean It' 'I Love Belarus!!!' 'Kill Me Shining' 'HOW MUCH IS THE FISH?'

 

Hand prints in paint, and probably blood.

 

Song lyrics ran down the wall like it was leaking. Swirls and demons and possessed little dolls covered the spaces between scribbled swearing and insults spilled from every corner and it all danced with the flicker of the tiny flame in Johnny's hand.

 

 _“Wow.”_ It was perhaps an understatement, but it was what he had.

 

Johnny held out a marker. “Here. We're missing a name now.”

 

Edgar took it and marveled up at the wall. He pulled off the cap and just stared. To add himself to all this history seemed a bit like defacing it.

 

He also wasn't used to writing his name.

 

It got easier with every line, and when he stepped back to look, 'Edgar' fit in perfectly with the other names. He couldn't help but smile at this very tangible visible sign that he was connected to the others now, that he might be part of them. The ink on his name was far fresher than the others', but he was happy to see it already bleeding into the wood.

 

“How long have you all known each other?”

 

“Heh.” The flame sputtered against Johnny's breath, but it held. “Devi, and thus Tenna, for something like two years. Jimmy for one and a half.”

 

“That long? And you're still hiding all this stuff from them?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Johnny was obviously not keen on dwelling upon that point, so Edgar steered the conversation slightly around it. “How did you meet them?”

 

“Devi made eye contact with me.” He traced an angry stick figure drawn on the wall beside him that was screaming 'blasphemy!' and 'fuck you!'. “I was sitting outside, on the stone wall behind the elementary school playground, and she looked up at me. At first, I thought it was an accident, but then she said, 'What the fuck is that dumb kid doing up there?'.”

 

“So she could see you.”

 

“And was used to no one seeing or hearing her, yeah.”

 

On the wall just above Edgar's head was scribbled 'Am I Awake?'. It felt strangely warm to see songs he'd enjoyed with these people reflected on the walls. “And she already knew Tenna?”

 

“Yeah. And then a few months later, I ran into Jimmy.”

 

“What was he doing?”

 

“Running. I physically __ran into_ _ him.  It was out near where I first saw you, actually.  On that ramp around the corner.  He'd apparently been watching me for a while and decided that was the day he was going to introduce himself.  And then he fucked it up and ended up on the floor.”

 

Edgar laughed. “I sympathize with him.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I guess we did too.” He ran his hands over the words ' never been hot enough' and smiled.  “Not the best decision, but we're stuck with him now.”

 

“Should I be worried about him?”

 

“With his weird jealous clingy shit, yeah?”

 

“And the part where he made me cut myself.”  Edgar gestured to the side of his head.

 

Johnny sighed. “I _am_ sorry about that, but you handled it well.  And Devi was right about you seeing eventually, I guess.  Jimmy just sort of has certain ideas about me that he refuses to accept aren't true, and so you look like a threat to him.”

 

This was actually sort of a novel notion. He'd never been _threatening_ before.

 

“Why does he think you're interested?” As soon as he asked he realized he could cite the way they all danced around each other in the choir room as a reason anyone could think Johnny was interested.  Edgar caught sight of a 'I heart J.C.' on the wall and assumed it to be Jimmy's doing.

 

“We're the only people in the world, Edgar.” Johnny flicked the lighter and the light vanished. “In Jimmy's mind, I _have_ to be. He has no other options.”

 

An immense weight dropped into Edgar's stomach. “Oh.”

 

The light from the rest of the gym was almost non-existent, but enough light still shone that Edgar thought he'd have a decent shot at getting out of here with his feet intact. On the wall, most of the graffiti was now too hard to read, but the names were still large enough to see, particularly Johnny's.

 

“Soooo, here's kind of a weird question.”

 

Johnny's keys jingled. “Okay.”

 

“I don't remember if any other me ever asked you this before, but seeing it written here... Why is it ' _Nny_ '?”

 

There was a shuffle and the ratting of Johnny's keys again. Edgar could just make out his hand pressed to the wall under his name.

 

“I used to know, but now I'm not sure. At first, it was just that I looked at _'John_ ' and it was _repulsive._ _”_

 

“You don't really look like a John, no.”

 

“Exactly. So, 'Johnny'- dammit, key - felt better, and I used that, and that was okay, still is, but – and Jimmy is the only other one with this problem – fucking __everyone__ has my name.  It's in kids' books, and it's generic names in instructional videos, and one plants apple seeds apparently?  It's just everywhere , and I thought, __'_ _ _How  is my name_ everywhere _, and I'm_ nowhere?'  So I took the name and I removed the name part.  'Nny' isn't a name, it's … the leftovers when you cut a person out of some syllables.”

 

“I like that.”

 

“Thanks. I did too.”

 

“But?”

 

He heard Johnny laugh or hiss or both.  “Well, then I remembered things.  Then I knew that I'm not even the first version of me to call himself that.  I tried to make that _me_ _,_ and it's still been attached to two guys before me.  If I didn't share memories with those guys, I'd feel better about it.  I could pretend it was coincidence.  In this case, I just feel like I've been directed.”

 

Making Johnny happy, if he really wanted to do that, was going to be a bit more difficult then he previously imagined. “I'm sorry.”

 

“For what?”

 

“I don't know, it just seemed like the right thing to say.”

 

Johnny didn't say anything.  While they stood there breathing, Edgar could hear the metal supports under the bleachers shifting and creaking.  When he really listened, he could hear the height of them, and almost hear the pattern the beams made.

 

“Do you hear anything?” Johnny whispered.

 

“Yes?” He kept his voice low.

 

“Not out here.” He heard Johnny knock on the metal, felt it reverberate up the entire structure.  And then Johnny tapped Edgar's forehead. “In here.”

 

Edgar closed his eyes as though darkness under a bunch of bleachers wasn't dark enough, but the more he tried to hear the sound of his own head, the louder the tiny groans of the wood and metal around him became.

 

“No, it's... nothing. Silence.”

 

Johnny's keys made a startling amount of noise and the area erupted in orange light again. The flame from the lighter quivered behind Johnny's thumb, and Johnny's other hand rested on the wall behind him.

 

“Look at this.”

 

Edgar crept forward to look at the scribbling Johnny had placed his hand on.  Johnny tapped the word ' _silence'_ and then removed his hand.  Edgar read the words and Johnny spoke them with just enough rhythm that Edgar knew where they'd come from.

 

_“Above All The Silence_

_Can You Hear_

_Can You Hear_

_Above All The Silence_

_Laughing Laughing?”_

_Lyrics._

 

It would be obvious to put them in here.  Of course a group like this would include music in their graffiti.  But Edgar could hear the song like it was being played for him, could hear the accordion, and the organ, and the wind, and everything spinning.  Apparently, hearing songs in your head didn't just happen when they were being played in the same room.

 

_“It's so difficult to breathe”_

 

“Is this...a hint at what I should do, or a demonstration?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Okay, then.”

 

“Come on.” Johnny began stepping back into the tangle of metal beams toward the open side of the bleachers. “We still have the rest of the tour to do.”

 

The gym had become much darker in the time they were under the bleachers, so now the only light was moonlight dusting in from the ceiling.

 

Johnny stopped in a rectangle of light and looked up at the sky. “You really want to find the key to the roof?”

 

“I really want to throw something at Pepito's house.”

 

Johnny nodded. “So that's a yes.  We'll leave these for another time, then.  We're going to be a while up there.”

 

They left the gym, and Johnny did not need to be reminded to lock it back up.

 

Next, Johnny took them just down the hall, and then ducked into a little mini alcove in the left wall.  In the corner, on the side wall, was a large blue door, again padlocked.  Johnny opened this one in no time at all and entered without a word.

 

Inside was a stairwell filled with moonlight, and Johnny took the steps two at a time.  Edgar hung back, just amazed that this was even an accessible part of the building. The stairs changed direction in the middle, and when Edgar turned the corner, he could see that above him was a long bridge with walls of glass.

 

“I didn't know this was here...”

 

“Clearly, you're not spending enough time here.”

 

“Can people always get in here?”

 

“During the day, yeah.”

 

“Where does it go?”

 

“The second floor, near the biology rooms.”

 

“Oh. Wow, I just... never saw this here.”

 

Johnny leaned against one of the panes of glass. “You seem to do a lot of that looking without seeing.”

 

“And hearing without listening, right?”

 

Johnny smirked. “Something like that, but I think it's the other way around.”

 

Outside, the stars were clear, and light from the moon reflected on the windows of the nearby elementary school. There were a few cars, even a few people way across the street beyond the parking lot, but it still felt like the only people for miles were Johnny and Edgar.  Staring into a calm night, he slowly began to realize how tired he was.  Just in front of him was a latch to open one of the windows, and he was able to push a window open enough to let in a rushing breeze that ruffled his hair and filled the space in the bridge with the kind of airy static only nighttime has.

 

When Edgar stepped away from the glass, Johnny was standing near the top of the steps they'd come up, holding his key ring and leaning against a dented metal door sporting a sign that read 'Maintenance Only.'

 

“Here is our opponent for the night.” He kicked the door and the dull clang echoed through the bridge and then presumably went into a biology lab.

 

“Okay. How do you want to do this?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Take turns?”

 

“How do you feel about taking things _off_ the ring?”

 

Johnny laughed. “So _efficient._ I thought you'd be up for more fun.”

 

“Every time I have fun with you I end up getting hurt.”

 

“And yet,” Johnny unhooked the keys from his belt and held the ring out, “here we are again.”

 

“And yet.” Edgar took the ring and pulled its latching bit apart.  Johnny sat down, cross-legged on the floor and waved for Edgar to follow suit.

 

“Keep them in order,” Johnny said when Edgar slid the first large skeleton key from the ring.

 

“Uh, sure. What's this one?”

 

“Not sure, but nothing in the school. It's too big.”

 

Edgar placed it on the floor between them. “Okay, then.” The next item on the ring was a smaller ring with several small silver keys attached to it. They all had asymmetrical tops, but seemed to be a matched set.

 

“Oh, those are all the cash registers in the cafeteria, we don't need to try those.”

 

Edgar frowned. “Why don't _you_ do this?”

 

Johnny shrugged, took the ring back, and began rapidly sorting the keys on the floor between them. He stopped abruptly when he hit a squarish silver one.

 

“Here, try this one.”

 

Edgar took the key and got himself up to try it in the door. The knob was loose, and felt like it shouldn't even be keeping the door locked.  The dents kicked into the front of the door had left the whole thing slightly out of shape. He could feel the breeze coming around the cracks between the door and the frame, but no matter what he did, the key did not work, and the door remained stubbornly closed.

 

“Nope.”

 

“Okay, here, trade me.”

 

Edgar handed the silver key back and was given a dull and ugly brownish one in its place.

 

“Too big.”

 

Johnny held his hand up for the return of the key. “We're going to be here a while, you should probably ask me some more questions.”

 

He certainly had a mountain of them, but the ones he felt okay asking were more like a modest pile.  How he'd ever ask _'What are you doing that you're able to direct us all around and make us like it?'_ without sounding intensely creepy, he didn't know.  Would he like to know if Johnny's friendliness was part of a performance or if Johnny genuinely liked him?  Or people at all?  Yes.  Could he really ask? No.

 

He could try to be entertaining though, and maybe something would fall into place.

 

“What are you going to do if Pepito comes after us for throwing things?”

 

“You say that like you aren't going to have to think of something to do, too.  But running like Hell seems like an option.  Alternately, embracing becoming some sort of ginger snap zombie.  Here, try this one.”

 

“No good.” Edgar tossed the key back. “I don't know, what if he just wipes our heads completely?”

 

“I might consider it a favor.”

 

“What do you think he is?”

 

“Fucked up. Here.” Johnny held up another key.

 

“I mean really.” Edgar tried the key, but it wouldn't go in. “No.”

 

“Yeah, I mean really, too.” Johnny dropped another key in Edgar's hand.

 

“I meant is he _human_ _,_ even?  Dib had all this stuff about aliens.” The key fit inside, but would not turn. “Still no.”

 

“I guess he could be an alien.  I hope he takes me back to the mothership with him, in that case.”  Johnny caught the key Edgar tossed at him and continued placing the ones he already knew in a neatly ordered line on the floor.

 

“I'm not sure you're quite strange enough to be an alien.”

 

Johnny put a hand over his heart and shot Edgar an exaggerated pouty wounded expression. “I was trying so _hard_ too.”

 

“It's _Jimmy_ that tries too hard, isn't it?”

 

“Oh!” Johnny's eyebrows shot up. “Wow, I didn't realize you'd progressed that far.  We're done with your tour, you clearly have this whole group all figured out.”

 

Edgar leaned his shoulder against the locked door and laughed. “Sorry, it just seemed appropriate.”

 

“No, no, well done.  Not recommended in his presence until we'd had you a little longer, but very nice.”  He held up a key between the knuckles of two fingers. “Here's one.”

 

Edgar took the key.  Despite that he was feeling worn out, he was happy to be there, and happy to be doing this thing that Johnny wanted.  He really _did_ want to make Johnny happy, though he didn't think it had anything to do with having once been someone who promised to do it.  Johnny's approval inspired such rushes of warmth and pride in Edgar, and being mind-wiped by an alien-demon man and then cutting his own head open had all been hand-waved away because Johnny smiled or sang or said 'Well done,' or all three.

 

If he could do things like this, all the time, maybe he and Johnny would __both_ _ be happy, and the most they'd ever have to consider about Pepito would be what to throw at his windows.

 

The key didn't fit.  He passed it back to Johnny and looked out at the parking lot at the blinking lights of late night traffic and the glow of the homes across the street.  This was all ridiculous.  No matter how comfortably strange Johnny felt, he'd still only met this version of him two days ago, and Edgar knew that his own isolation up until this point was probably increasing his fondness of the first person to ever laugh with him.  Johnny's treatment of every song he shared with everyone as a passionate music video probably wasn't helping either.

 

Johnny was smaller than all of them, and probably younger too, and yet he kept this tiny group of otherwise willful people in a strange kind of orbit around him.  With a glance he could tell them where to be, and they not only did it, but wanted to.  He could take their food, make them volunteer to bleed, send them away when he tired of them, take them on strange trips, make them sing for him, make them _adore_ him.

 

_We're the only people in the world, Edgar._

 

It was terrifying.

 

_“ Hello, Major Tom, are you receiving? Turn the thrusters on, we're standing by... There's no reply.”_

 

And it didn't matter.

 

“Sorry,” Edgar said. “I'm just tired.”

 

Johnny stood next to him, smiling and holding a key.  “I'm kind of disappointed you didn't space out enough for me to get to the chorus. Here.”

 

Edgar took the key, and briefly considered that Johnny stood around singing at him rather than just try the lock himself.  It fit in the lock.

 

And it turned.

 

“Shit, shit. This one works.”

 

“Fuck, hold on. Don't open it yet.”  Johnny dove to the floor and began putting his key ring back together while Edgar stood hunched over the door knob.

 

“Do you want me to help with-”

 

“No, no! Don't move.”

 

Johnny moved quickly and precisely, even when excited.  Edgar heard a click as Johnny latched the ring itself back together, and then Johnny scrambled to his feet and stood by the door almost bouncing on his heels. “Okay, okay. I'm ready. _Go.”_

 

The first thing he noticed was the wind.

 

When the door opened, the tiny wisps of air that had been leaking in around the poor seal became a gust that nearly pushed Edgar back.  Johnny stepped outside against the wind with a wide smile, turned in a circle once with his arms wide, and then immediately ran to the roof's edge.

 

The view, if Edgar was perfectly honest, was not that much different or even that much better than what they could see from the windowed bridge. It had a kind of freedom to it that the bridge hadn't, though.  No ceiling, no structure from the windows, no reflections, no glare. From here, you could look straight up and forget, for a little bit, where you were.

 

At Edgar's feet, though, were very obvious reminders of where they were.  The roof was sun-bleached and mostly empty, though there was quite a bit of gravel, twigs, and other random garbage scattered around. There were small stories up here in the form of faded florescent Frisbees and deflated kickballs.

 

And in Johnny, whose presence there made it all less mundane, who gripped the edge of the roof and leaned over, inhaling the wind like he was letting it into his bones.

 

This wasn't Edgar making Johnny happy. This was Johnny making himself happy with an incidental Edgar.  Whatever Edgar did for him, if he could do something at all, would have to be something else, something that Edgar did because he was important. Something Johnny wouldn't eventually have done on his own. Something Edgar didn't just fall into.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Edgar saw one of Johnny's feet leave the ground, and the other extend until he was on his toes. Edgar jumped to put his arms in front of Johnny before he had time to see or think of much more.

 

They were not touching, but Edgar definitely looked like someone's mother in a car on television. His right arm was stretched out in front of Johnny, who blinked at him, eyes wide.

 

Johnny only said, “Um.”

 

“Sorry, I... I thought you were going to...” He pulled his arm away and stood up straight. “Yeah.”

 

Johnny looked at Edgar like he'd never seen him before.

 

And then abruptly fell forward.

 

Edgar grabbed him around the shoulders.

 

Johnny was shaking a little. Edgar was not sure his own lungs were still working.

 

“Johnny?”

 

The shaking wasn't fear or trembling, it was stifled laughter.

 

Edgar stepped back and Johnny laughed so hard he threw his head back. _“_ _Twice _?_ _ You did that _twice?_ _”_ He gripped the edge of the roof to keep himself standing and wiped at one of his eyes with the back of his hand.  “Oh, my god. Should I try again?”  He threw one leg over the side and Edgar twitched and reached out, no matter how he tried to keep himself still.

 

Johnny pulled his leg back and dropped his face into his hands, still laughing.

 

“It's not funny,” Edgar said, suffocating in embarrassment.

 

“Are you sure? What if I just put an arm over? Wanna go for four?”

 

“It's still not funny.”

 

“Okay, okay.” Johnny rubbed his eyes and nodded. “Sure. I'm done.” He sniffed and exhaled a long breath, but was still obviously itching to laugh.

 

Edgar crossed his arms. “You were right.”

 

“Oh? About what?”

 

“You _are_ kind of an asshole.”

 

Johnny's face was blank for a second and then it was like a mask cracked open and he just began cackling.  He turned to Edgar and gave him another theatrical bow, looking up at him with a devilish smile.  “And yet, here we still are.”

 

Edgar smiled back at him. He shouldn't have, he should have told him off, or walked away, or done __anything_ _ that wouldn't encourage him, but he just couldn't.

 

“And yet.”

 

Johnny looked smug as he turned back to look out over the side of the roof.  From this vantage point, they could see Pepito's house.

 

“I expected to see some kind of 'UFOs Land Here' sign on his roof,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar nodded and propped his elbows up on the ledge.  “Yeah, I would have thought at least a satellite dish.”

 

“Right?” Johnny kicked a few stones, picked one up, and hurled it off the side of the roof, but it fell short of Pepito's house and landed in the street between the house and the school.

 

“Here, wait a minute.” Edgar went and collected the faded Frisbee he'd passed when they first came through the door. Johnny lit up and actually made a bit of an undignified 'eee' noise when Edgar handed it to him.

 

“If I miss, we are going down to get it and retrying until I don't.”

 

Edgar just laughed and shrugged. _Why the fuck not?_ “Okay.”

 

 _J_ ohnny drummed his fingers on the disc a few times and then twisted back and let the thing fly. It soared over the street and slammed into one of Pepito's windows before bouncing into his fenced-in backyard.

 

“HA!” Johnny thrust both arms in the air and jumped up in celebration.  Honestly, it was kind of adorable and Edgar couldn't help hissing“Yes!” right along with Johnny's outburst.

 

If only throwing Frisbees at Pepito would solve anything.

 

Johnny looked around his feet, kicking stones and twigs out of the way. “Do we have anything else?”

 

“There's a few deflated balls on the other side.  And I think I saw a shoe.”

 

“As much as I'd like to hit him with a shoe, I'll never get it to go that far.”

 

“The Frisbee was good, though.  Let's just bring stuff with us next time.”

 

Johnny raised his eyebrows and leaned away from Edgar a bit. _“'_ _Next time_ _',_ huh?”

 

Edgar laughed, and it betrayed a few of his nerves.  “Well, you __d_ i _d_ _ have me write on a giant wall and cut my head open.”

 

Johnny grinned.  “But I'm an asshole, remember?”

 

“Yeah, a little.  I don't think I mind.”

 

It might have been the opposite of minding, and he might have found Johnny sort of charming and a little exciting.  Being sort of an asshole didn't negate any of that for some reason, it was just another feature.

 

Johnny leaned over the edge, just a little, and looked up into the sky. “Okay. Next time it is.” He took a breath with his entire body, stretching even his fingers to take it in.    “Do you ever think about just being up there?”

 

“In space?”

 

“Just... the stars. To just go up and over.” He made an arcing motion with his hand, but aimed over the side of the roof, it had a somewhat different connotation.

 

“That looks like you want to bomb the city.”

 

Johnny laughed and shook his head. “That would work too.”

 

Suddenly, there was light in the window Johnny had hit with the Frisbee and Edgar heard Johnny take a sharp breath. The urge to hide and the desire to see what happened were equally strong, with the latter winning only because Johnny hadn't moved.

 

The window opened and Todd leaned out.  He scanned the ground under the window and just around the side of the house and then craned his neck to see over the fence into the backyard.  He lingered there for a long time, and Edgar wondered if something was going on that they couldn't see or hear, and then Todd looked right up at them.

 

Johnny froze so completely he may as well have been a cardboard cut out. Edgar held his breath. They were too far away to see facial expressions, but they'd definitely been seen, and most likely recognized.

 

Todd shook his head and ducked back into the window, and Edgar wondered if there really was anywhere safe from demon mind-wiping.

 

Johnny turned his head just enough to make unsettled eye contact with Edgar.

 

Edgar kept his voice quiet, as though Pepito and Todd would ever hear them up here. “Are you sure you don't want to tell the others about him?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I don't understand. Don't you trust them?”

 

Johnny pressed his hands to the sides of his head for a few seconds and then slid them over the back of his skull and left them interlaced behind his neck with his elbows down in front of him. “I _like_ them.”

 

“You think Pepito will go after them?”

 

“No, I think-” Johnny looked up into the stars again. “If I remember more, I'm going to start being someone else, someone not me.  If they're connected to him, to any of this, and they remember, then what happens?  Devi remembers that she should _hate me_ and Tenna helps keep her away?  Jimmy gets _worse_ _?_ They're all _so empty _,_ _ but I like them that way.  I don't want them to change.”

 

“They _will_ change, though. Even if they don't remember,” Edgar said softly. “So will you.”

 

Johnny laughed, bitterly, deep in his throat. “But this way they'll change in a way that I _like._ _”_

 

“And what about me?  It's okay that _I_ change and remember things?”

 

“You already _know! _”_ _ Johnny flung his arms out in a grand gesture.  “We got _lucky_ that I met you when you were already half filled in, now you're--” He flailed his hand at Edgar like saying _'Look at you _,'_ _ and then let his hands drop to his sides.   “You're like me.”

 

Was there a right thing to say? _I'm really excited that you think we're alike?_ I don't think you can shape your friends like bonsai trees? _I want to help?_

 

_That would do._

 

“I want to help you.”

 

“I want to think that will matter.”

 

Edgar sighed and looked back across the street at the hints of light in Pepito's house. “Did throwing that Frisbee at him matter? Did it make a difference?”

 

Johnny frowned. “I felt better.”

 

“Then I'd like to do that.”

 

There was a moment, as Johnny looked absolutely terrified of Edgar, that Edgar was afraid he'd said something really damning and Johnny would throw him off the roof and go paint over his name under the bleachers.  Johnny looked just like his friends on the first day: like a scared wild animal.

 

And then he took a long breath and closed his eyes.  When he opened them, the terror was gone and he spoke so softly, Edgar almost didn't hear it over the wind. “Okay.”

 

Everything else he could think of to say or do felt foolish, so after several seconds of silence, he said one of the most generic and harmless things he could think of:

 

“It's nice up here.  I can see why you wanted to come.”

 

“I wanted-” Johnny's voice was a bit strained and he stopped to swallow and cough. “I wanted to look at the stars.  With nothing else in the way.”

 

Edgar looked up and felt again when he'd seen on the way out here in the first place.  On a roof like this, there was nothing: no other building, no wires, no window framing, even in peripheral vision. It could just be you and the sky.

 

When Edgar looked away from the stars, he turned to see Johnny holding out a tiny headphone earbud, despite the usual headphones on his neck.

 

“Here. Sometimes I say stupid shit.”

 

Edgar pressed it into his ear and watched Johnny do the same with the other one.

 

_“ Maybe I've been the problem, maybe I'm the one to blame_

_But even when I turn it off and blame myself, the outcome feels the same_

_I've been thinking maybe I've been partly cloudy, maybe I'm the chance of rain_

_Maybe I'm overcast, and maybe all my luck's washed down the drain”_

 

Edgar knew it, like he knew all the others. Since he knew the words, he knew what was coming, and thought that playing this was something of Johnny's way of explaining himself. It made Edgar smile. It wasn't possible to tell if Johnny was making fun of himself by playing the song, or trying to strongly identify with it. It might have been both. If anyone could do both at the same time, Johnny probably could.

 

_“I've been thinking 'bout everyone, everyone you look so lonely..._

_But when I look at the stars,_

_when I look at the stars,_

_when I look at the stars I see someone else._

_When I look at the stars,_

_the stars, I feel like myself.”_

 

 

“We should come up more often, then,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny blinked at him like he'd forgotten Edgar was there, and so Edgar clarified. “To help you keep track of what's you, if this makes you feel like yourself.”

 

There was some hesitation, but Johnny nodded. “Sounds good.”

 

 

_“I've been thinking 'bout everyone, everyone you look so empty..._

_But when I look at the stars,_

_when I look at the stars,_

_when I look at the stars I see someone else._

_When I look at the stars,_

_the stars, I feel like myself.”_

 

Johnny sat down on the roof ledge and, attached at the ears, Edgar went with him.  Johnny looked into the stars and blew out a long breath.

 

_“Everyone, everyone, we feel so lonely_

_Everyone, yeah, everyone we feel so empty_

_When I look at the stars_

_when I look at the stars..._

_When I look at the stars I feel like myself.”_

 

“If we didn't see each other again after today,” Johnny asked, his gaze still fixed on the sky, “do you think either of us would stop remembering?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Maybe if we hadn't met Pepito.”

 

He really did think they were just hurtling toward whatever they were going to remember now that they'd met Pepito.  He also thought that he and Johnny were likely speeding up the return of each others' memories, but he was so afraid of losing what little contact he now had.

 

Johnny kicked at some rocks.  “It's a good thing I like you.”

 

Perhaps they'd reached the same conclusion.

 

“The feeling is mutual.”

 

And Johnny laughed, so it was all okay.

 

_“When I look at the stars_

_the stars, I see someone...”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the roof. 
> 
> This is one of the parts that I heard about most often when I wrote the original version of this story. The roof held such magical allure for me, since I based it on a real roof that I broke into and sang off of with people dear to me, and when I heard other people also really gripped with it, I was so happy. The roof was such a strong concept for me and the people who responded to this story originally that it's going to end up playing a larger part in this version of the story than it did in the original.
> 
> I based Johnny and Edgar's interaction with threatening to fall over the side on late night adventures with the boyfriend I had at the time the original part of this was written. There's a lot of him in Edgar in general, not just in those scenes, but this is where I still see it most. 
> 
> I loved doing all this. I got to move the already established song to a proper featured place, and I got to add another one. Edgar and Johnny got to be ridiculously compatible, Edgar got to be wise, Johnny got to be adorable charming asshole, I got to flesh out their world and their experiences. It's all my favorite things, really. 
> 
>  
> 
> The songs are:
> 
> Squonk Opera - Above All the Silence (from their musical 'Inferno') (This one was part of the original SWAN, though I've changed -and I would say FIXED - its context.)  
> Switchfoot - Stars


	10. Let's Pretend We Don't Exist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar does his best to become one of the group, and Johnny has a birthday.

Edgar woke up on the floor of Johnny's office, wrapped around the mostly-flat beanbag. He barely remembered leaving the roof the night before, and definitely didn't remember deciding to spend the night.  It felt a bit like getting away with something to be in the room by himself, especially knowing that this was likely the closest thing Johnny had to a bedroom. 

 

When he sat up, everything ached: his back and arms from sleeping on the floor, his hip from falling off the table the other day, his shins from slamming them into the metal under the bleachers, his head where he'd cut himself... He was grateful that no one had told him that finding the person he'd always thought was missing would be so painful, or he might not have bothered trying to meet Johnny at all.

 

He pulled himself to his feet with the help of a stack of record players and smiled at some of the photos pinned to the walls. Now that he knew the people in them better, they were funny, kind of sweet (if a little fucked up), and held a kind of hope that he might someday be in ridiculous photos too.

 

Edgar stepped out of the room and into the front part of the office with the old desk. “Hello?”

 

The tattered desk chair spun around to reveal Johnny folded up in it with a sketchbook across his knees. “Hi.”

 

“Hi.” There were probably polite things to say here. Ritual greetings that he didn't have enough practice to make. So he skipped them. “What are you doing?”

 

“Just...” Johnny looked at the book in his lap. “... drawing.”

 

“Thanks for letting me sleep here.” That was probably the polite thing from the before.

 

Johnny shrugged. “It seemed easier than dragging you by your ankles back to your house.”

 

“I hope I wasn't  _that_ bad.”

 

“It was close.”

 

“Sorry.” He tried to laugh to smooth it over. “It was a really big day.”

 

“Yeah. Even  _I_ slept.” 

 

Edgar wanted desperately to suggest that they just go back to his house and watch monster movies or cartoons or infomercials until they felt nothing, but he was worried it would sound desperate or sad, and he'd seen enough television to know that desperate people are mocked, not given what they want. He'd have to work on his tolerance for high-octane bullshit if he planned to stay with Johnny and the others, but he could think of nothing he wanted to do so much as stay.

 

“So. What now?”

 

Johnny made some large circles in his sketchbook. “I haven't decided yet.”

 

“When will Devi expect to see you?”

 

“Lunchtime.”

 

Edgar sat on the desk in front of Johnny's chair. “Do you see them every day?”

 

“Unless someone is sick, yeah.”

 

“That's nice. It sounds  _exhausting,_ but nice.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “You'll get used to it.”

 

“If the next few days don't hurt so much, then yes, probably.”

 

“If you keep whining about that, they _will_ hurt.” Johnny closed his sketchbook and dropped it and the pen he'd been using on the desk. “In the meantime, we need to go back to your house.”

 

 

 

Edgar almost expected something to have changed in his house since he left it. Now that he knew there was something slightly sinister sitting in his own walls, even the plain and innocent things were unsettling. What if there'd been something in the food all this time? Something in the soap? Were there cameras in his shower, in his appliances? Could he be slightly radioactive? Cursed?

 

Johnny put a small collection of things on the dining room table when they arrived, and then immediately went upstairs.  He spent a long time in the shower, and made no mention of needing towels or soap.  There was something odd about this, Edgar was sure.  People didn't do this on television; in fact, they usually made a big fuss over using someone else's bathroom.

 

Something like twenty-five minutes after he'd locked himself in the bathroom, Johnny thundered down the stairs and took handfuls of food from Edgar's fridge with little more than a casual wave in Edgar's direction.  He said nothing about taking all his things back to the choir room, asked for no permission to take things, and made no apologies. Edgar couldn't be sure if Johnny moving into his house in under twenty-four hours was what he'd felt was missing.

 

He was equally unsure if it excited him or made him nervous.

 

He felt the same when he was standing in Jimmy's parking lot an hour and a half later, waiting to meet up with the others.  Johnny either did not notice Edgar's anxiety, or did not care.

 

“What are we getting for lunch?” Edgar asked. “Should we have brought something?”

 

Johnny shook his head. “No, they wouldn't eat your food.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“They don't trust you quite that much yet.”

 

Edgar sighed, but supposed it made some fucked up sense. He wasn't sure he trusted the others either, and frankly, the food in his house was becoming a bit suspect too.

 

There was a loud bang as Jimmy slammed the door on the way out of his rickety trailer. He ducked under the caution tape and strolled out to the corner where Johnny and Edgar were waiting.

 

“I see you're still here,” Jimmy said when he got close enough.

 

Edgar put his hands in his pockets and tried to project some comfortable confidence. “I'm still here.”

 

“I'm surprised.”

 

Johnny looked disinterested at best. “You should be pleased, Jimmy. It means not everyone finds you so repulsive that they have a hard time coming back.”

 

“Devi comes back now,” Jimmy defended.

 

“I'm sure it kills her inside a little more every time.”

 

The funny thing about Jimmy was that he didn't seem to mind the constant assault of insults, and in fact seemed to thrive on them. No matter what Johnny threw at him, Jimmy smiled. At first, Edgar thought it was strange that Johnny didn't notice that Jimmy enjoyed even negative attention, and then remembered Johnny on the roof, straining to explain that he liked these people the way they were. Maybe sticking Jimmy with barbs like this was essentially the same thing as laughing with Edgar.

 

There was a squeak from across the street and Tenna trotted over with Devi slightly more moodily in tow.

 

Tenna lit up when she saw Edgar and squeaked her skeleton toy in his face. “You're still alive!”

 

“Mostly.”

 

Devi only nodded in vague acknowledgment that Edgar was standing there. She looked at Johnny. “So, food?”

 

Johnny adjusted the way his headphones were sitting around his neck and answered Devi like he was reciting something. “Today's menu options are the Ladies Over Fifty bingo meet-up, and a picnic for the parents of preschoolers.”

 

Jimmy nearly jumped up and down. “Oh, oh, let's do that one!”

 

Devi nodded. “I always hate to say this, but I'm with Jimmy.  The bingo meet up is just going to have more of what we took yesterday, possibly just flavored with more anise.”

 

“That preschool is over at West End, right?” Tenna asked. “That'll be perfect, our playground is like three blocks from there.”

 

"Wise choices, as ever."  Johnny clapped his hands together and dipped his fingertips in Tenna's direction in a gesture of deference. “Tenna, if you don't mind?”

 

She squeaked her skeleton at him and then immediately set off down the block, leading the way as though she were guiding a parade. Devi and Jimmy were quick to follow after her, and Edgar, yet again, held back with Johnny to get some context.

 

Edgar hadn't felt too guilty about the bake sale. He wasn't even sure he felt guilty about where they were going more than he felt unease about what it meant.

 

“Is this how you get everything? You just steal it from semi-public events?”

 

Johnny smiled up at him. “ _When you've got talent, everything is free.”_

 

It took a second, but then they registered as lyrics. “Did - did you just quote a-?”

 

“Shhh.” Johnny held a finger to his lips. “No one has to know.”

 

Edgar laughed, but his heart may have also skipped a beat.

 

This was going to be  _such_ a problem.  There was no one like Johnny on television.

 

It wasn't a long trip, but it was informative.  Tenna led the group like an enthusiastic tour guide, often walking backwards and pointing out interesting landmarks. Some were small (“Here we have the paint Devi dropped on the sidewalk last spring.”), but others were fully formed stories.

 

“On your left, you can see the church where Johnny convinced half of the congregation that Jesus had returned and the other half that Satan had paid them a personal visit with nothing but a single artistic application of a bleeding hand, all in the name of letting the rest of us raid their pasta luncheon.”

 

Edgar looked cautiously at Johnny, who beamed and wiggled his fingers like a magician.  “Four people fainted, and five threw up” he said, glowing with mischievous pride.

 

A left turn and a bit more of the block later, and Tenna gestured to a run down basketball court.  “The court where Jimmy repeatedly shot a guy's basketball back against his head every time he missed the basket for _two whole hours_!”

 

Jimmy puffed up with pride and Johnny softy applauded.  "Stupidity exists to be exploited," Johnny said.

 

Tenna stopped them all in front of an abandoned lot and pointed across the street to a house with a faded 'For Sale' sign in the yard.

 

“And here's the house where Devi spent last Halloween repeatedly covering this family's windows in black paint until they called the police.”

 

“What happened when they called the police?” Edgar asked.

 

Devi grinned over her shoulder at him. “I painted 'fuck' on the windows of the police car with my hands and everyone ran.  I heard they brought a bishop or something with them when they came back to get their stuff.”

 

“No one lives there anymore,” Tenna said. “We got the place where we stay now the same way.”

 

Jimmy picked up a stick and began dragging it across picket fences and cars. “How'd you get your place, Edgar?”

 

Edgar looked at Johnny for guidance, and Johnny just raised his eyebrows and waved his hand.  _Go on._

 

“I woke up in it when I was ten,” Edgar said, not without some guilt. “I didn't do anything to it at all, and I don't need to do anything to keep it. It just seems to be mine.”

 

Devi stopped walking and turned around slowly. “I'm not sure if I should be jealous and angry or scared and angry.”

 

Edgar winced a little. “Angry either way, huh?”

 

Tenna and Jimmy stopped too.

 

Jimmy crossed his arms and glared at Johnny. “I thought he was supposed to be like us.”

 

“He is,” Johnny said.

 

“Bullshit!” Jimmy yelled. “He doesn't steal, he doesn't bleed, you said he doesn't even  _hear._ What makes him so special?”

 

“I  _remember_ ,” Edgar said. 

 

Devi clenched her hands into fists. “Well, no one else does! I don't know what Nny did to make you play this game of his-”

 

“He didn't!" Edgar shouted. "You saw the reflections! You were the first person I ever talked to, and I  _told_ you I knew him! Don't you think it means something that I can even  _see_ all of you?”

 

“Maybe, but you know what? The last time Johnny told me we were going to hang out with someone else, we ended up with  _Jimmy._ ”

 

Jimmy hit Devi's shoulder. “Hey!”

 

“Maybe he just hasn't learned,” Tenna offered. It was surprisingly gentle. Edgar didn't know why Tenna was so sympathetic, but he was grateful for it. “It's not like we all all got together and immediately started hearing and bleeding.”

 

Edgar smiled at her, and then looked at the others. “I'm new at  _everything._ Please just give me a little while. I know I don't know everything I should and I'd be suspicious and angry too, but I thought with Nny vouching for me, it would be okay.”

 

He gestured to Johnny and immediately realized something was wrong.  Johnny was still standing next to him, but he was not  _there._ His gaze was focused in the empty lot behind them.

 

“Nny?”

 

The others forgot the issue of Edgar entirely.

 

Jimmy leaned close and tried to look into Johnny's eyes, but they neither re-focused nor blinked. “Nny? Are you okay? What are you looking at?”

 

Devi snapped in Johnny's face and then grabbed Tenna's toy and squeezed it hard. “Nny! Come on, you asshole! Stop it!”

 

“There's nothing here,” Tenna said, wandering off the sidewalk and into the dust and dead grass where Johnny seemed to be focused. “Just some bricks and dirt.”

 

Johnny suddenly smashed his eyes shut and took a step backwards.

 

Devi stepped away from him and handed Tenna back her toy. “Jesus, you shithead, what the fuck was that?”

 

Johnny looked around. “You didn't hear that?”

 

“No, obviously.”

 

“I thought I heard someone talking.”

 

Tenna squeaked her toy again. “Yeah, that would have been  _ us. _ ”

 

“No, no, not  _ you _ . Someone else.” 

 

Edgar and Jimmy exchanged worried looks, though he had no reason to assume they were thinking the same things.  Jimmy's expression softened considerably, and Edgar was surprised he had the capacity to look so gentle. “Nny, do you want-?”

 

Johnny shook his head and held his hands out in front of him to keep Jimmy from getting any closer. “Let's just go. I'm hungry.”

 

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

 

 

 

The preschooler event was easy to spot. It was situated in a sunny and grassy area behind an old elementary school and across the street from a dark and shadowy fenced-in playground. A large banner reading 'Welcome Parents!' sagged and swayed between two trees, and every table had a paper table cloth in a different primary color. Pasta casseroles, salads, hamburgers, a watermelon, and a large pot of beans were set up along four lined up picnic tables, and another table held a sizable spread of cake and other desserts. The event was almost entirely women and their regiment of strollers and diaper bags, with a few stray men clustered together near a smoking grill.

 

This was going to be Edgar's first time being involved in obtaining food, and he hoped that his willingness to go along with Tenna's plan would earn him some points. 

 

Tenna led the way to the food, directed the others to stand in strategic locations around the tables, and then grabbed a red plastic plate. She hurled it toward a small group of women standing about ten feet away. They jumped, made a joke or two about the wind, and retrieved the plate. Tenna then threw a matching cup to much the same reaction.

 

The response when she picked up plates and began ladling food on them, however, was explosive. Some people screamed and fled the scene immediately and Edgar felt himself both wanting to join them out of some bizarre instinct and wanting to laugh until he was sick.   Still other people began loudly praying and going on the offensive against the floating plates. Unfortunately for those leading the attack against the picnic, Tenna was surrounded by a guard of four unnoticeable people who were well adept at being tripped over.  More than a few people tripped over Edgar's already bruised ankles. 

 

Tenna collected several plates full of heaping piles of food, spilling several portions in the process.  No one was able to lay a hand on her, thanks in no small part to Jimmy and Devi's incredibly enthusiastic tripping.  

 

“Okay, we're good!" Tenna called when the plates began bending under the weight of the food she'd piled on them.  "Move out!”

 

She shoved a plate each in the hands of the rest of the group and they all tore off across the street to the fenced in playground, leaving screaming, panicked women and children and some tattered streamers in their wake.

 

While they waited to break through the fence to the playground, Edgar found himself holding one plate containing a mountain several inches deep of potato salad, and another with eight hamburger patties and a random scattering of buns. Jimmy stood next to him holding a swamp of baked beans and pasta.  Tenna stood alone holding a smashed and mangled torn off chunk of marble cake.

 

Devi hoisted Johnny up in front of the chainlink fence while Edgar and Jimmy held their plates. If Edgar had had any doubts that Devi could lift or throw Johnny, they would have been swiftly put to rest seeing this.  Johnny easily flipped himself over the top and dropped to the ground on the other side, where he opened the lock that was situated on the inside.

 

“Shouldn't it be locked on this side?” Edgar asked.

 

“This is less tempting for other people to bother with,” Tenna said.  "The playground is still visible, unfortunately."

 

Johnny pulled the chain keeping the gate to the playground shut, and swung the door open.  He bowed like a butler in a horror film and made a long sweeping gesture through the entrance. “Come in, come in, you're all expected.”

 

Inside, everything was overgrown with weeds. There was a merry-go-round that was rusted and lop-sided, some monkey bars in much the same state, and a few free-swinging rusted chains hung where two of the five swings in the set had lost their seats.

 

The group set out their large plates of food on an old worn picnic table near the center of the playground. Tenna pulled out extra plates from under her smashed cake plate, and a large handful of forks from her pocket.

 

Jimmy accepted his fork and then high-fived Tenna. “Excellent work.”

 

She put her hands on her hips and looked off into the distance. “All in a day's work, citizen. Where there is food to steal, the Mighty Tenna shall find a meal.”

 

Devi latched onto Tenna's shirt and hauled her down. “Sit and eat this shit before it gets everywhere.”

 

“It's really already done that.” Edgar licked some potato salad overflow from the side of his hand.

 

“You're all lucky I didn't just mix it all together,” Tenna said.

 

“I'm confident we would have eaten it anyway,” Edgar told her.

 

She grinned at him and took a large helping of potato salad. “Oh, you would have. Whether you wanted to or not.”

 

There was the tiniest hint of a melody underneath the sound of Tenna's laughter.

 

Edgar turned to his left and looked at Johnny, who raised an eyebrow at him.  His mouth was full, so he said nothing, but made an offended-sounding grunt instead.

 

“Do you have music playing?”

 

Johnny swallowed and tapped his fork on the headphones around his neck. “I always do.”

 

“What's playing?”

 

Johnny pulled one side of the headphones away from his neck and Edgar leaned close to it, but the song playing didn't match what he thought he'd heard.

 

“Huh.”

 

The others stared at him.

 

“Um, sorry,” he said, focusing intently on his cheeseburger patty. “I just thought I heard something.”

 

They finished their food with no other incidents and no other strange melodies. There was really something magical to eating food that had been obtained this way. Maybe it was Edgar's imagination that it tasted better than anything he'd ever eaten at home, or maybe these preschool parents were just really great at picnic food. It left a mess on the picnic table since Tenna hadn't been able to grab napkins in her raid of the mommy party, but it was a fun mess.

 

After lunch, Jimmy and Johnny tried to see who could spin the other off the merry go round fastest, hardest, and most dramatically. Tenna turned out to be very skilled at hanging upside down on broken monkey bars, and Devi seemed happy to accompany Edgar on the creaky old swings.

 

“You don't have to do this, do you?” she asked.

 

It didn't even matter what 'this' was. “No.”

 

“Why are you?”

 

Across the playground, Jimmy went sailing from the merry-go-round and skidded through the dirt and grass on his back.  Johnny was so eager to celebrate his victory over Jimmy that he let go of the spinning death trap he was riding on and went crashing into the dirt right after him.

 

“I want to be with people like me, and I want to know more about remembering Nny.”

 

Devi began swinging her legs. “I'm not entirely sure we should be trusting you.”

 

“That's okay. I suspect you don't really trust Jimmy either.”

 

“I trust  _ Tenna,” _ Devi said. “The rest of you are on a spectrum.”

 

“Well, I hope you can put up with me long enough to get me in a better place on that spectrum.”

 

“We've put up with  _ Jimmy _ this long.”

 

Edgar let himself sway on the swing.  “How long did it take you guys to be okay with him?”

 

“Three months?”

 

“Okay,” Edgar said, kicking at the dirt. “Give me three months, then.”

 

Devi swung by him and stirred up a bunch of dust. “I suppose we can all live with that.”

 

Edgar hoped  _ he _ could live with it.

 

 

 

 

Two days later, Johnny had still not moved his things from the extra room in Edgar's house, though it was well past the weekend he'd told Edgar he was staying for.

 

There was perhaps a tactful way to ask about these sorts of things, but Edgar did not know it.  “So, hey, are you just staying here?”

 

“Do you want me to leave?”

 

He should have had to think about it, and he shouldn't have encouraged this when he knew it was just going to make his problem worse.

 

“No.”

 

But he didn't.

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, the group meandered through town and ended up on the main street, where Edgar followed them all into a fountain at the center of a little emporium. Johnny jumped into it without hesitation and the others, like everything else they did with Johnny, followed him. The water was cold, heavily chlorinated, and a little bit green, and yet they splashed and dunked each other and scooped up the coins from the bottom without a single concern.  Edgar wasn't eaten alive for splashing the others, and it in fact it seemed to make them smile at him more. 

 

“ _Let's have bizarre celebrations... let's forget who, forget what, forget where._

_ We'll have bizarre celebrations... I'll play the Satyr in Cyprus, you the bride being stripped bare.” _

 

Wet and soggy, the group looked ridiculous. Jimmy's usually sloppy but puffy mohawk was now an oil slick across his skull and the black smudges around his eyes smeared over his cheeks a little. Devi looked so much more vulnerable when wet, and Tenna so much more like a gleeful child. Johnny's wet hair had flattened, and his clothes hung from him like heavy weights. His shoulder blades, spine, and bits of his ribs were visible through the clinging soaked fabric.

 

Johnny pulled his stolen cellphone out of the bag he left outside the fountain and stood in front of the the tallest waterspout, holding the phone out at arm's length. The others crowded around him immediately.

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.”_

 

It was the first photograph of Edgar ever taken. He had Johnny check for him later, and was relieved both that he did not blink, and that his usual company in mirrors had not followed him into a camera.

 

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.”_

 

On Saturday, Jimmy called Johnny while he and Edgar were testing out the strength of Edgar's blender.

 

“I really can't talk about this right now!” Johnny screamed into the phone.

 

Johnny held his hand over the top of the blender while Edgar pressed down the 'Hi-Speed' button.

 

“ _Let's have bizarre celebrations... let's forget when, forget what, forget how._ _  
_ _ We'll have bizarre celebrations... we'll play Tristan and Iseult, but make sure I see white sails.” _

 

 

“I'm ready when you are!” Edgar shouted.

 

“Hang on Jimmy, we can't hear you!”

 

Johnny threw the phone on the counter and pulled the lid off. He and Edgar, along with everything else in the kitchen, were abruptly pelted with turquoise paint, green glitter, and bits of crayons.

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica._ _  
_ _ Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.” _

 

When Edgar opened his eyes, he had paint flung across his glasses, and Johnny was wiping some from his mouth with the back of his hand. He caught Edgar's gaze and broke into a large grin. 

 

“Sorry,” Johnny laughed into the phone. “You'll have to go without us today.”

 

 

“ _Maybe I'll never die, I'll just keep growing younger with you, and you'll grow younger, too._ _  
_ _ Now it seems too lovely to be true, but I know the best things always do.” _

 

 

The next Saturday, Johnny wore his paint-spattered shirt out to raid the bingo meet up with the others.

 

With the hall forced empty but for five teenagers, they settled into a comfortable takeover of the entire building.

 

“What happened to that shirt?” Devi asked before biting into her donut.

 

Johnny looked up from stamping racing stripes onto Tenna's arms with a bingo marker. “Oh, this? I made this with Edgar.”

 

Edgar saw Tenna give Devi a playful 'uh-oh' face.

 

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.”_

 

 

Wherever they went, Tenna snickered at him. Edgar kept telling himself it was some kind of joke she had with Devi and that it didn't mean anything.

 

The truth was that he'd been caught watching Johnny at least four times in the last week.

 

When Johnny was demonstrating to Devi that he could fill a Freezie cup to perfectly full, without spilling, behind his back, Edgar watched him from beside the rack of cheese crackers and Tenna waved at him.

 

“Yoo-hoo!”

 

“Um, hello?”

 

Johnny and Devi turned to look at Edgar, and Edgar panicked and knocked over the entire cracker display.

 

Johnny asked later to be let in the joke and Edgar had to admit that there wasn't one.

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.”_

 

When Tenna challenged Edgar to a game of Battleship in the choir room while everyone else worked on vandalizing the advertisements for the end of the year dance, she repeatedly precision-targeted every one of his ships.

 

He'd never had anyone to play this game with before and didn't know whether to be impressed or skeptical.  “Are you cheating?” 

 

“Most definitely.”

 

“Wh- how?”

 

“I'm just standing up and looking while you watch Nny color that poster.”

 

He couldn't  _ see _ his face turn red, but he certainly felt it.  He wondered if his extra reflections would be red too.

 

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.”_

 

 

When Devi took everyone upstairs to the school library so they could paint the distinguished busts of old dead authors, Edgar spent more time watching Johnny paint Edgar Allen Poe like the night sky than he spent painting his assigned Homer. Whether it was the lines Johnny was making or how he was making them, Edgar didn't know, but whatever it was fascinating. He could have watched, content, for hours. Instead, Tenna popped up and slapped a star sticker on Homer's forehead, snapping Edgar out of his zen state.

 

“What's going on over here, huh?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“I think you're a bit distracted.”

 

“No.” But even as he said it, his gaze drifted to the left...

 

“Nny!” Tenna yelled. “I think you're causing some teen angst over here!”

 

_ “Jesus, _ Ten!” Devi screamed from across the room. “Keep it down! You're in a  _ fucking  _ _ library!” _

 

Tenna skipped away laughing, but not before sticking a star sticker on Edgar's shirt over his heart.

 

Johnny turned back from watching Tenna frolic away with a lost expression on his face, and Edgar couldn't look at him the rest of the afternoon.

 

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.”_

 

 

They were in the choir room when Jimmy scrambled up to Johnny like an excited puppy. “Nny, Nny, NnyNnyNny, come sing this with me, please?”

 

Johnny pulled himself and his sketchbook away from Jimmy's grabby hands. “Sing what?”

 

“It's another German one. Please?”

 

Edgar didn't expect Johnny to give in easily, let alone at all, but he put his pen down in the center of his sketchbook after only a second or two of silence. “Okay.”

 

Jimmy was nearly bursting. “Fuck, yes, thank you, give me just a second!”

 

When Johnny turned to look at his sketchbook, he made eye contact with Edgar, gave him a resigned kind of smile and shrugged. Edgar shrugged back, but was utterly unable to make an acceptable facial expression in time and so did nothing but smile in what had to be a vaguely besotted fashion.

 

Johnny caught it and laughed at him. “What's wrong with you?”

 

“Nothing! Nothing, I was just thinking.”

 

“Your thoughts must be a strange place.”

 

Jimmy returned as the heavy guitar opening to the song filled the room and Johnny's shoulders fell a little. “Ugh, Jimmy, really? This stuff kills my throat.”

 

“You said you would!”

 

“My voice isn't deep enough for this shit.”

 

“It's not a performance, just sing with me.”

 

Johnny stopped arguing and sang just as the first verse started.  Edgar watched him yelling with Jimmy and thought of how much he'd loved screaming about Belarus with Johnny, when neither of them had a voice to match the original singer of that song either. He never would have known that Johnny didn't want to sing this song if he hadn't heard the conversation immediately before it.  Johnny moved with it as much as he did when he loved whatever song playing.

 

“I'm sensing a theme here,” Tenna said, plopping herself in front of Edgar.

 

“Hey!”

 

She leaned close to him so he could hear her talking quietly even over the music. “You're getting obvious. I'm just saying.”

 

“I don't-”

 

“Devi would also want me to tell you that this is a bad idea.”

 

Edgar blinked at her and then caught a flourishy gesture from Johnny just beyond the shape of Tenna's face. He looked back at Tenna's eyes and she smiled knowingly.

 

He turned away from her and fixed his gaze on the pens and brushes sitting on the table in front of him. “I already know that.”

 

 

“ _Let's pretend we don't exist, let's pretend we're in Antarctica.”_

 

 

 

Tenna had every reason to snicker. She didn't, however, always know when to stop.

 

In July, Edgar and the others perused a convenience store looking for snacks and junk food now that school was out and the cafeteria was no longer feeding them. Johnny had opted for his usual cherry Freezie and Jimmy was playing with the nacho cheese dispenser when Tenna called them all over to a display of cookie dough, biscuits, rolls, and other pre-packed bakeables advertised by a large puffy character in a chef hat. The store had a fairly large cut out of the the doughy character sitting next to all his product.

 

Tenna assumed the same waving position as the little mascot. “Someone get a picture of me with this guy.”

 

Johnny took out his phone, and Devi reached into her bag for the camera she'd become fond of carrying. Edgar saw Johnny snap the photo, but then Johnny froze in place, staring at the image of Tenna and the baking mascot on the screen.

 

Devi took her photo and Tenna took a few steps before she noticed Johnny.

 

“Nny, you missed it. The moment is gone.”

 

Johnny lowered the phone and looked at Edgar. 

 

"Nny?" Edgar tried to talk to him or connect with whatever was affecting him, but Johnny may as well have been looking  _through_ Edgar. Johnny took a marker out of his pocket and approached the display. Edgar watched him closely, hoping it was nothing.

 

Tenna started to giggle, and Jimmy said something Edgar couldn't understand from beyond the nacho bar.

 

Johnny traced around the Dough Boy's eyes several times each and then drew a slow spiral through one of the eyes.

 

“Hey!” Devi called back. “Are we ready to go or what?”

 

“Go on ahead,” Edgar said. “We'll catch up.”

 

Tenna clapped him on the shoulder. “Careful,” she said slyly.

 

“We'll be right there, thank you.” Edgar was short with her, and didn't mean to be, but he had a feeling that Johnny wouldn't be happy with everyone crowded around him.

 

As he got closer to Johnny, Edgar wasn't even sure that  _he_ would be wanted there.

 

“Nny? What's wrong?”

 

Johnny shook his head. “There's something... about this.”

 

“What about it? Are you sure you want to-”

 

Johnny winced liked he'd been cut and stepped backward clutching his head in one hand, a Freezie with the other.

 

“Johnny!” Few things were more difficult than being unable to touch Johnny. Edgar couldn't steer him away from walking into something, couldn't shake him out of getting stuck in this, couldn't do anything that television had taught him should work.

 

Thus, Johnny could just spiral unhindered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck...”

 

“Here, just let me help you, give me that.” Edgar gestured toward the Freezie and Johnny handed it over. His breathing was heavy and visible in his heaving shoulders.

 

“I... I made something with these once. Or I  _knew_ them?” He gasped for air and glared at the defaced advertisement. “I didn't like them. No, no,  _he_ didn't like them, I didn't- fuck.” He strained to look up at Edgar. “Do you know this?”

 

“I've never seen it before.” He tried to speak slowly, clearly, calmly, but wasn't sure how he was doing. The others were going to wonder where they were any second and seeing Johnny tortured by his own head was...

 

“Mother  _fucker._ ” Johnny snapped his head back and panted like he'd just broken through the surface of the ocean. He took several long, deep breaths and steadied himself against a display of generic cola. “I think we should leave now.”

 

Edgar handed him the Freezie. “I'm inclined to agree.”

 

Johnny took the drink and wiped some hair away from his face. “Thank you.”

 

“You're welcome.” He smiled, because he couldn't _not_ smile when he did something Johnny appreciated, but the concern lingered. “Is there anything else I can do if that happens again? I don't want to touch you, because I said I wouldn't, but that's all I can think to do in this situation and I want to help.”

 

“Just keep talking.”

 

“That's all?”

 

“Yeah, that's it. Remind me that I'm me and not them.”

 

“Okay. I can do that.”

 

Tenna stormed around the corner display of bagged popcorn. “What the fuck are you guys doing? Come on!”

 

With Tenna and Johnny both in front of him, Edgar couldn't be caught looking. He didn't want to be creepy, he just knew he wanted to make Johnny happy, and that Johnny made  _him_ happy.

 

 

 

The third week in August, it was boiling hot. Though it was a place they remained suspicious of, it was hard for Edgar and Johnny to pry themselves from the cool stone floor in the basement when presented with the summer heat. Edgar regretted choosing to take Johnny's suggestion of copying his extra reflections' facial hair now rather than in the dead of winter, but he tried to view it as a symbol that he was a new person. 

 

He felt new, certainly. He never imagined he'd have the opportunity to meet anyone, let alone see them so often he got used to them. He saw Devi, Jimmy, and Tenna nearly everyday and had begun to predict their reactions and their tastes. _This loud metal song will appeal to Jimmy, Tenna will adore this horrible new fast food, Devi would love the look of the evil girl on this comic book._

 

“I think I could stay down here straight through October,” Johnny said. He was flat on his back on the basement floor, limbs stretched out like he was making a snow angel.

 

“You'd want to miss your birthday because you were down here?”

 

“My birthday comes to me. It doesn't not happen just because I'm on the floor.”

 

“You wouldn't want to break into the park's pool or something?”

 

“I would, but it's going to be full of people.”

 

“People who can't see you.”

 

“That doesn't make them any less obnoxious.”

 

Johnny had spent a portion of every single day with Edgar since being invited into his house, and despite the close proximity, Edgar found he never once felt 'used' to Johnny. He could feel comfortable, but it wasn't the same thing.  Johnny still surprised him, still taught him strange things, still made him feel a bit like tripping over himself on a daily basis.

 

It would be nice, Edgar thought, if he could surprise Johnny, too.

 

 

Tenna, luckily, was very easy to convince to do anything that could be construed as fun. Once she heard what she'd be doing, she was delighted and was so enthusiastic about helping it was almost a little alarming. Edgar had never met anyone before this group, but he suspected that even if he had, he would have never met anyone as happy to be playing a dead person as Tenna.

 

Edgar found a lot of what he needed, unsurprisingly, in his basement. It knew that he was supposed to be making Johnny happy, so things for Johnny's birthday fell into that category, no matter how weird they were. He'd learned long ago that nearly anything he spent significant time wishing to have, he could get, but knowing that it extended to terrorizing the population of a swimming pool both felt empowering and made him consider going to live in the school instead of the house.

 

By the time they were in the park on September 1st, strolling invisibly into the pool, everyone was in on what Edgar had set up, except, of course, Johnny.

 

“There's still so many fucking people,” Johnny whined as they walked along the chain link fence that surrounded the pool.

 

“It's closing tomorrow,” Devi said. “People want to get in their last day of marinating in a city's worth of filth and chemicals before May.”

 

Jimmy threw his towel over his shoulder. “The water here always tastes sort of like salty ass.”

 

Tenna stopped walking. “Whoa, okay, first I need to know if there is another flavor of ass, and second, I need to know how you know about ass flavors at all.”

 

“A gentleman never reveals his secrets.”

 

Edgar sat on a bench along the fence with Devi and Johnny. “I can't believe I'm considering _'gentleman'_ and _'ass'_ together in the same conversation.”

 

“It's _'Jimmy'_ and _'gentleman'_ that's getting me,” Johnny muttered. Edgar watched him bending his flip-flop and noticed that his toenails had been painted black to match his fingers.

 

“Jimmy, I'm hurt,” Tenna whined. “I thought we had a good thing.”

 

Johnny bent the flip-flop and it nearly split in two. “Don't say that, Tenna, he'll try to taste your ass.”

 

Jimmy grinned at Johnny with half-lidded eyes. “Tell her you know from experience.”

 

Johnny threw the flip-flop at him.

 

It wasn't usually wise to take Jimmy's bait like this, but Edgar couldn't resist. Johnny would be happy in a little while anyway. He turned to Johnny while Jimmy mimed doing obscene things with Johnny's flip-flop. 

 

“So _do_ you know this from experience?”

 

Tenna clapped her hands like a seal. “I think someone's jealous.”

 

Devi put her head in her hands. “Who the fuck would be jealous of having first hand knowledge of salty ass?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Tenna, evidently.”

 

“The answer is yes,” Johnny said as he removed his other flip-flop. “I _do_ have experience with Jimmy attempting to do this.” He held up a finger the second Edgar took a breath. “The next answer is _'No,_ he did not succeed.'”

 

Tenna sighed and flopped down onto the bench next to Johnny. “Alas, the mystery of Jimmy's knowledge of ass flavors lives on.”

 

“You should learn to be content with that,” Johnny told her.

 

“I will never rest until I know, Nny.”

 

“Well, okay, since we're talking about not resting, I'm asking now: What's with the zombie face?”

 

Tenna had come to the pool made up like a dead girl. This hadn't been planned, but Edgar and the others knew what it was for. Really, it was just impressive that Johnny had let it go unremarked upon for this long.

 

“You'll find out  _soon enough_ ,” Tenna moaned dramatically. 

 

Edgar could have floated away when Johnny grinned and leaned close to Tenna. “How soon is soon?”

 

“I don't know, this is Edgar's gig. He says words, Zombie Tenna obeys.”

 

Johnny's eyes went a bit wide and he blinked a few times before turning to Edgar. “Really?”

 

“You're into benefiting from others' morbid distress, right?”

 

Johnny absolutely lit up. It was the first he'd looked excited about this trip all afternoon. Excited anticipation was audible in his voice. “Yes?”

 

“Good. I arranged some of that.”

 

Tenna saluted Edgar from the other side of Johnny. “Just say the word, captain.”

 

“Whenever you're ready, Tenna. Kiddie pool would be more effective, don't you think?”

 

Tenna cracked her knuckles. “Oh, yeah. Let's _do this_.”

 

Johnny glanced rapidly between Edgar and Tenna with his wide-eyed expression. “What are we doing?” They'd only known each other a few months, but Edgar had never seen Johnny so excited. It was rare that Johnny wasn't carefully choreographed, even in casual interaction, but there was nothing theatrical about him nearly bouncing from where he sat.

 

Edgar had noted when they first met that Johnny wasn't pretty like Devi, cute like Tenna, or trying as hard as Jimmy, but that he was certainly someone to notice. Now he was also kind of oddly adorable. It was a strange kind of spectrum to inhabit, this space between adorable and terrifyingly feral, but it was precisely where Johnny fit.

 

It was also, apparently, a spectrum Edgar liked.

 

 

 

 

 

Tenna strolled casually to the kiddie pool, and Johnny watched the reactions of the people around her. He tried to pinpoint the moment she became visible to them, but the expressions of disgust or discomfort were too gradual. As she stepped into the water, they made space for her in a way they never had for him.

 

“I'd have done this myself if I could,” Edgar said.  There were hints of justification in his voice. 

 

Johnny nodded. “Yeah, I know. Someday.” He flexed his fingers around the chain links and watched Tenna, eager for whatever Edgar had planned to pan out.

 

“We _can_ help her out, though.” Edgar reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a small red pillow. “Here.”

 

“Red dye?” Johnny understood immediately, and grinned. “Please tell me we have enough to fill the pool.”

 

“Enough for the kiddie pool. But we're hoping it will still do what we need.”

 

Devi walked behind Edgar and patted his shoulder. “Come on, we've got some blood to drop.”

 

Jimmy tossed one of packets in his hands in the air and caught it again. “And a shit ton of swimsuits to ruin.”

 

Johnny could actually feel his blood pumping faster. “Does Tenna have any with her?”

 

“She tucked some into her suit,” Devi said, shaking her head. “She should bleed profusely from her chest and/or ass when she applies enough force.”

 

He nearly bubbled over inside with how delightful this all was and couldn't restrain a cackle. “We're going to fill this kiddie pool with a fake dead girl's fake ass blood?”

 

Jimmy snickered and Edgar looked about ready to do the same.

 

“Nothing says 'birthday' like fake ass blood,” Edgar said. “It's all for you, even.”

 

The others had given him things over the years, certainly.  Usually, they were hand-made things like jewelry and shirts, or whole displays of his favorite foods stolen from the Quik Mart or the 24-7. He'd never received an _event_ before, let alone one that terrorized other people.

 

He bowed to Edgar, as it seemed somewhat traditional now. “Why, _thank you_.”

 

Johnny and the others slipped around the fence bordering the kiddie pool where Tenna was casually lounging near the tiny stairs that led down into the water. Johnny saw her make eye-contact with Edgar and give a quick, sharp nod. She rose to her feet as though she planned to leave the pool, only to fall forcefully down over the steps, smacking her hip against the corner of one of the stairs.  Jimmy flinched as the packet of red dye that had been stashed in Tenna's suit broke and began filling the water around her like a cloud of smoke.

 

A kid of about six jumped back in alarm. “That lady is bleeding!”

 

Tenna moaned and picked her head up, looking vacant and perhaps a little angry.

 

“Fuck, she is good,” Jimmy whispered.

 

A few well-meaning moms nearby tried to reach out and help Tenna, but she lashed out and swatted them away.

 

The loudspeaker crackled to life. “Can I have your attention please? If we could have everyone clear the pools, please. Do not run.  Please clear the pool.”

 

Tenna lunged forward, clawed at a small child with one hand and used the other to break the dye packet tucked against her chest. It left her chest seeping and her hand coated in a particularly thick layer of 'blood'.

 

When the screams became real, Devi smiled and tore open one of her dye packets. “This seems as good a time as any!”

 

She released the dye into the water around the churning legs of small children and mothers, and with a slick of it still following the Tenna, the effect was rather like she was slowly infecting the entire pool. She moaned and actually reached out to get a 'bloody' handprint on someone's shoulder. Then, to Johnny's surprise, she bit a man's hand.

 

Immediately, everyone ignored 'Do not run' and Johnny overheard the lifeguard saying, “We have a potential re-sighting of the undead down at the Park Pool,” into a walkie-talkie.

 

Even while gleefully shaking red dye powder into the pool like pepper, Johnny had to pause. “How fucking dumb are people? You don't become a zombie by falling on your ass.”

 

People streamed from the pool area in panicked waves, throwing red water and stained pool toys in every direction. Everyone who had been in even vicinity of the kiddie pool had the effects of red dye on their suits or skin. Jimmy fell against the tide of people and scraped his knee open on the concrete after slipping on some little water wings, and as Devi pulled him to his feet, sirens began to overpower the hysterical screaming.

 

Johnny couldn't see Edgar anywhere.

 

Devi shoved Jimmy to his feet and screamed at Tenna. “Tenna! Stop! Ten, you're going to get hurt!”

 

Jimmy screamed after her. “Ten! Ten, there are sirens! Turn it off!”

 

Johnny climbed atop a lounge chair to try to see over the crowd bottlenecked at the pool entrance. Tenna was the one in actual danger, but all he could concentrate on was what had happened to Edgar.  When he looked down, Tenna was moaning and gargling as she sank into the now totally red water.  Johnny watched her press herself against the bottom of the pool and then crawl out on her stomach, sliding out of the pool and up the tiny stairs. As far as anyone else would know, the undead girl vanished into two and a half feet of water.

 

“I can't even imagine what that shit has done to my hair,” said said, spitting red water onto the concrete. “I'm gonna need one of you to just shave it off.”

 

She was still sitting on the concrete when some kind of special response team filed into the pool complex and began posting guards at every exit, snackbar, and bathroom. Just as the guys in biohazard suits charged in, Edgar ducked out of the last of the crowd of dyed civilians.

 

He glanced behind him and mouthed 'wow' before trotting back over to the others. Immediately, he acted as though he hadn't even been gone, and offered his hand to Tenna. “Here, let's get you up.”

 

She got to her feet, and Jimmy gave her a thumbs up.

 

“Lovely work,” Edgar said. “Thank you. Literally could not have done that better myself.”

 

Tenna grinned at him. “Hey, high-five – It was a fucking great idea.”

 

“Let's hope so,” Edgar said.

 

Devi crossed her arms. “Now we just hope these guys go looking for Tenna and don't drain the pool before we get to enjoy it.”

 

Tenna shook her hair and sent a spray of red into the others' faces. “Oh, in that case, hang on.” She went to the fence and shook it, testing for stability. “Jimmy, Edgar, help me over. I can lure them into the park.”

 

Jimmy dusted off his scraped knee and cracked his knuckles. “Sure, let's-”

 

Johnny snapped his fingers at them. “Ten, if you go out there, you're stuck. They're putting this place on lock down and this is not the school. I don't have keys to this place.”

 

Edgar slid in beside Johnny and got a bit closer than he generally dared. He held one hand in front of Johnny and swinging from his extended index finger was a small cluster of keys on a ring with a tiny plastic keychain reading ' _LIFEGUARD'._

 

“Now you do.”

 

The keys could have been made of glass or smoke for how cautiously Johnny took them. He was surprised when they had weight and he could feel them in his hand. It was nearly impossible to take his eyes off of them. “How – how did you – ?”

 

He looked at Edgar with a completely foreign sense of wonder.  Every time he thought he knew what to expect of Edgar, there was something else.  Johnny and the others had grown up stealing things from people, and Edgar had grown up waking up to a bed and a kitchen. While Johnny didn't resent him the way Devi did, he never would have believed that Edgar was actually capable of stealing keys during an emergency. He couldn't stop smiling.

 

He also couldn't form a whole sentence. “Are – _Really?_ ”

 

Edgar beamed at him. “ _Really_.”

 

“And you – just now?”

 

“Yeah.” He shrugged, broke eye-contact and a muscle in his cheek twitched as he tried to rein in his smile. “Happy Birthday.”

 

It was strange that Edgar persisted in being a real thing.  Johnny continued looking at him, expecting him to turn into dust or some elaborate mental fiction that the others had been playing along with, but he was solid and real and awkward and kind of a dork and unexpectedly skilled at keeping Johnny's attention.  Devi and Jimmy had never provoked this reaction, and Johnny didn't have a name for it, but whatever it was, it was simultaneously unsettling and thrilling.

 

“Thank you.”

 

He did not remember the last time he'd said those words with any significant weight attached to them, if he ever had at all.  Now they seemed hilariously insufficient.

 

Edgar smiled with a kind of embarrassed shrug that did not suit a person who had just staged a visit from the undead so he could steal some keys as a birthday present. “You're welcome.”

 

“So this is adorable an' all,” Tenna said as she clung to the fence, “but I'm gonna need some help.”

 

Edgar jumped and dashed to Tenna's side, helping Jimmy hoist her over the top of the fence. She fell over the other side with an ugly thud and made a genuine moan of pain when she landed. Devi gripped the fence and leaned into it.

 

“Jesus, Ten, are you okay?”

 

Tenna waved her off. “I'm good, I'm good.  I'll be right back, don't go in the pool without me.”

 

“It's my birthday,” Johnny said. “I'll do what I want.”

 

Tenna got to her feet. “No one but Nny get in the pool without me.”

 

And she was off to the parking lot, howling and screaming.

 

Moments later, someone on the response team called out, “It's not even blood!”, but the force was already mobilized in Tenna's direction as she tore off into the woods.

 

Johnny felt the metal of the keys in his palm, felt their colors and their shapes and their weights and the way they reflected light. The pool would be closing after tonight, so he wouldn't get a chance to use these again until next summer, but he was committed to memorizing them now.

 

He didn't know how long Tenna had been gone by the time she returned from shrieking in the woods. He did know that Edgar practically glowed when Johnny let Tenna back in with the keys to the main gate.

 

 

 

 

With a low level response team now out looking for Tenna in the woods and the whole facility gift wrapped in 'CAUTION – UNDEAD' tape, they had the pool to themselves.

 

Edgar had only been swimming once before while on one of the few fieldtrips he'd found a way to sneak onto. He'd nearly forgotten the sensation entirely, and he'd certainly never had anyone to play in the water _with._

 

Jimmy pulled him underwater several times, but backed off when Edgar stopped hesitating to retaliate. After giving Johnny the keys to the pool and successfully winning them an evening of the pool all to themselves, it felt as though there was nothing that could hold Edgar back.

 

Tenna proved to be extremely fond of the diving board, smearing her dead girl make up more and more with each splash. Devi, it turned out, was an incredibly fast swimmer and only Tenna would go through the hassle of bothering to race her.

 

Johnny seemed to enjoy sitting underwater for long periods of time. Edgar watched him sit down there, cross-legged as though he were meditating, for stretches of seconds that bordered on uncomfortable to even think about. When Johnny reemerged from the water, he'd wipe the water from his eyes, glance around, laugh at Edgar watching him _again_ , and go right back down.

 

Several repeats of this into the evening, Devi floated up to him on her back. “Hey.”

 

“Hi.”

 

“Very nice.”

 

Edgar smiled. “Do I pass?”

 

“Yeah. I might have to reevaluate Jimmy now, his three months weren't nearly this good.” She rolled over and got herself upright, bobbing up and down at Edgar's side. “Word of advice, though.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Don't do this.”

 

“What's 'this'?”

 

Devi motioned to Johnny – or at least the dark spot he made under the ripples of the surface of the water. “This. Him. This flirting or whatever you're doing.”

 

Edgar sighed. “Everyone keeps saying this is a bad idea, and no one but Jimmy has a clear reason for why.”

 

“Jimmy is fucking dumb.”

 

“But he has a _reason_. Why do you – ?”

 

Johnny splashed and gasped to the surface. He wiped the hair from his eyes with one hand and offered the other to Edgar. “Hey, come down here with me.”

 

Devi pursed her lips, but without a solid _reason_ not to, Edgar was definitely taking Johnny's hand.  Johnny pulled him a few feet away from Devi and the prickling burning sensation he'd felt when Johnny shook his hand the day they met came rushing back, spinning through his blood and sending his heart racing.

 

“What are you doing down there?”

 

“Listening.”

 

“To what?”

 

“Everything. Just come on.” Johnny bounced up, took a deep breath, and nearly pulled Edgar under with him.

 

“Wait, wait, I – Sorry, I just don't think I can hold my breath as long as you can.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Do what you can. I won't hold you down there or anything.”

 

He didn't know why they were holding hands and he didn't care, but it was making sentences difficult. “Not interested in murdering me?”

 

“Why would I ever do that?” He grinned and bounced on his toes again. “Ready?”

 

Edgar looked over his shoulder to see Devi frowning at him. “Yeah.”

 

At first, he heard nothing but the rush of water over his ears. Then, as he felt the scratch of the concrete bottom of the pool against his legs, he heard the other sounds. Muffled splashing, a tiny clink that was quiet but sharp, and the pounding of blood in his ears.

 

He half expected to hear a song down here.

 

And while the sounds _were_ interesting, they were overshadowed by the sensation of holding Johnny's hand. He still didn't know why it was happening, but he hoped with everything he had that he wasn't going to do anything to stop it.

 

Unfortunately, no matter how happy his hand or his head or his heart, Edgar's lungs protested strongly to the arrangement, and he sprang back to the surface. He heard Johnny surface with him, and was momentarily delighted, but before he could see anything but bright light, he was underwater again, and Johnny's hand torn away from him.

 

The water burned his nose, his throat, and his eyes. Somewhere under the panic, he couldn't help but think that Jimmy's earlier description of the water's flavor was oddly accurate.

 

He came up sputtering, disoriented, and coughing.

 

“-out of fucking nowhere, I swear!” Jimmy.

 

“Tenna!” Johnny. “What the fuck?”

 

Edgar shook the water from his nose and eyes and then the others came into view. Devi was still only a few feet away, looking as unamused as she had when Edgar left her a minute earlier. Johnny was at beside her, and Jimmy stood off to Edgar's right scowling with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

 

An unsettling swirl around his ankles told him exactly where Tenna was. She popped up directly in front of Edgar wearing a large pair of goggles, the last of her dead girl make up running down her cheeks.

 

“The Mighty Tenna stalks her prey for her prey's own good,” she whispered.

 

Edgar caught Devi's eye. She crossed her arms and looked frankly just like Jimmy. She mouthed a sharp “See?” in Edgar's direction.

 

He did not see.

 

Tenna turned to Johnny and saluted him. “The subject was lulled into a false sense of security, sir. Had to take him down.”

 

“You're out of your fucking mind. And don't call me 'sir.'”

 

“Anything for the mission,” Tenna replied.

 

Johnny's expression was remarkably cold.

 

_It would be nice if he were as disappointed about letting my hand go as... Wow._

 

“Did Jimmy put you up to that?” Johnny asked.

 

“Nope!” She shot back down under the water, and seconds later, Jimmy toppled backward in a stunning display of flailing limbs and splashing water.

 

He re-emerged a few moments later, coughing and spitting. “Ugh, fuck you _and_ this ass-water.”

 

“It really _is_ salty ass flavored,” Edgar commented, the burn of it still lingering in his sinuses.

 

“Thank you!” Jimmy gestured toward Edgar. “At least _he_ knows what I'm talking about.”

 

“He has literally _never_ had the opportunity to taste ass,” Devi said.

 

Tenna bobbed around Devi. “Have _you_?”

 

“No, Ten.”

 

“I can't believe how long you guys will talk about asses given the opportunity,” Johnny grumbled. He made brief eye-contact with Edgar and then vanished under the water again. Edgar desperately wanted to follow him, but was immediately set upon by pressing looks from the others.

 

“Edgar, really,” Tenna said.

 

Devi shook her idea. “ _Bad idea,_ okay?”

 

Edgar boiled inside, nearly reigniting the trail of the burn from Johnny's hand. “Why?!”

 

“How long have you known him?” Devi asked. There was a clear comparison she wanted to make between Edgar and the rest of the group, but Edgar could beat her at this.

 

“From another lifetime,” he spat.

 

“What about _right here_ him?” Jimmy asked. “A whole summer, maybe?”

 

“He – !”

 

Johnny came back up. “Hey, do you guys think anyone left any pool noodles?”

 

Edgar hoped that would be the end of it.

 

 

 

 

Fifteen minutes later, he had Johnny on his shoulders swinging a slightly red-stained blue pool noodle at Tenna, who was perched on top of Jimmy. Devi sat at the edge of the pool as the referee and trying very hard to look like she wasn't enjoying herself.

 

The vaguely established object of the game was for Johnny and Tenna to knock each other into the water, but Edgar felt he was getting far more pool noodle blows than Johnny was. Perhaps it was just that Johnny's particularly tenacious clinging made Edgar look like a better target for her ultimate goal, or perhaps Jimmy was set out to punish Edgar for his obvious crush and successful gift giving.  Either way, he hovered in a strange space of his head spinning because of his contact with Johnny and intense focus on keeping himself and Johnny safe from future pool noodle welts.

 

He liked being trusted. He'd never had a conscious thought of wanting to be, because he'd never needed it, but now even as they conspired to hit him with pool toys, the group had trusted him to pull off an evacuation of the pool, and Johnny had trusted him today with degrees of touch that Edgar wouldn't have dared initiate on his own.

 

Johnny ducked under Tenna's swipe and rammed his chin against Edgar's head. Edgar nearly lost his balance and fell back against the side of the pool, and Jimmy took it as an opportunity to storm in and loom over him.

 

“Ow, ow! Tenna, that isn't fair!”

 

“You are not spared just because it is the day of your birth, foul creature!”

 

Edgar flinched with every smack of the noodle, whether it hit him or not.

 

Jimmy had never looked so satisfied. “Give up, you don't have anywhere to go!”

 

Johnny ducked his head until his cheek was pressed against Edgar's temple. “How good is your grip?”

 

“Are you serious?” Edgar asked.

 

“Well?!”

 

“I think yours is the bigger issue here!”

 

“I'll be fine, just go!”

 

Edgar took a breath and ducked under the water with Johnny wrapped around his neck. The weight was hard to balance and he nearly toppled forward underwater, but their duck was quick enough to startle Jimmy. Edgar reemerged away from the wall and with Johnny still on his shoulders, though they were both a bit dazed.

 

“Hey!” Jimmy yelled. “That isn't fair! Devi, you're not even watching!”

 

“We said the rules were he had to be knocked off!” Devi called back. “He's still on!”

 

Tenna lit up at the prospect of the challenge and Jimmy may have snorted like a cartoon bull.

 

“Nice job,” Johnny told Edgar. He was panting a little. “Glad you knew what I meant.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He wanted to say something better, something 'I like you, so I pay attention'-ier, but Jimmy and Tenna didn't give him the luxury.

 

A battle of questionable sportsmanship followed, and when Johnny did finally fall from Edgar's shoulders, it was because Jimmy backed them into a string of pool buoys, and Edgar's weight shifted back enough that he couldn't compensate for Johnny.  Johnny toppled backward and Edgar got even more water up his nose.

 

Johnny came up waving his hands. “Augh, augh, time out!”

 

“You can't time out!” Tenna yelled, slapping the water with her noodle. “Get back up there and fight me, you knave!”

 

Johnny rubbed his eyes and coughed. “Fuck off!”

 

“He's just mad because he can't knock us over,” Jimmy said smugly. He and Tenna high-fived.

 

Like someone flipped a switch, Johnny went from whining and playing the victim to hell-bent on vengeance. He said nothing to Edgar, just hoisted himself up on Edgar's shoulders using the buoys that had been his downfall not two minutes ago.

 

“Let's go. Straight forward.”

 

Jimmy blinked in alarm at Johnny's lack of volume and backed away, sending Tenna into a comedic rage. She bapped his head with her noodle. “What are you doing, you baby?! Go!”

 

Edgar got them close and Johnny happily bludgeoned Tenna with the noodle and then abruptly stopped striking her and held it with both hands horizontally in front of his face.

 

“Edgar, go back under!”

 

He didn't have the luxury this time of knowing what Johnny was doing, so he ducked under and hoped for some direction. He felt Johnny struggling against the noodle wanting to float and risked opening one eye underwater. He didn't know how Johnny did it, but Edgar watched him get the noodle behind Jimmy's knees.

 

Then, when Edgar and Johnny shot up with their noodle, Jimmy's legs flew into the air and Tenna dropped from his shoulders.

 

“What the fuck just happened?” Devi yelled.

 

Edgar laughed. “Nny's some kind of pool noodle whisperer!”

 

“This is not over!” Tenna declared as she nearly choked Jimmy trying to get back on his shoulders.

 

Jimmy and Tenna, luckily, were not as good at maintaining underwater contact and incurred a few penalties for coming apart during their evades. Johnny was docked a point for ramming his pool noodle into Jimmy's stomach and knocking the wind out of him, and Tenna lost a point for kicking Edgar in the eye.

 

Eventually, Devi gave up even refereeing the game and they'd occasionally trip over her as she did laps.  Jimmy said it was like having a sand trap in golf and they continued as though she were a random chance game element.

 

Edgar had never had the opportunity to compare being on a team with anyone else, nor did he really have any yardstick for 'normal' or 'natural', but working with Johnny to do _anything,_ whether it was delivering pool noodle death or encounters with the supernatural, felt _right._

 

 

 

“You guys, it's getting cold and hard to see you! I think we should call it a night!”

 

Devi sat just barely silhouetted on the side of the pool. Edgar looked around and realized what little light they had was just extra from the streetlamps in the park. Until now, he'd been so lost in his connection with Johnny and his determination to keep fighting Jimmy and Tenna that he hadn't noticed the temperature or the increasing black of the night.

 

“Yeah, okay,” Johnny said. Edgar had expected more fight. “Let me down.”

 

Edgar reluctantly crouched into the water and Johnny unwrapped himself from Edgar's neck.

 

“Hey!” Tenna shrieked from Jimmy's shoulders. “We didn't agree to the game being over! You forfeit!”

 

She and Jimmy high-fived once again as Johnny and Edgar climbed out of the pool.

 

Once everyone was wrapped in towels and they located Johnny's one missing flip-flop, Johnny let them outside, and locked the doors behind them. Edgar ducked under the caution tape, but Devi stopped him from leaving.

 

“Wait, I want a picture,” she said. She pulled her camera from her duffle bag. “Everyone get in the tape or something.”

 

The second photo of Edgar ever taken showed him with caution tape crossed over his chest, and Johnny pressed against his shoulder, showing off the stolen keys. Jimmy stood holding Tenna hovering over the tape as she offered the camera her middle finger.

 

“Good,” Devi said, fussing with the camera screen. “I'll add it to the wall later.”

 

Tenna dropped to the ground and held out her hand for Johnny. He took it and she shook their hands vigorously. “Happy Birthday, you freak.”

 

Devi slightly inclined her head as Tenna shuffled to her side.

 

“Nny.”

 

Johnny mimicked the motion in response. “Devi.”

 

“Have a good night, asshole. We're off to raid the 24/7, unless you need to come with us.”

 

“Nah, but get me something. It's my birthday.”

 

“We'll see!” Devi bowed away and she and Tenna headed toward the park.

 

Jimmy approached and held his arms open for a hug.

 

“Nice try, Jimmy.”

 

“Not even for your birthday?”

 

“ _Especially_ not for my birthday.”

 

Jimmy shrugged, like he expected as much. “Well, I made you something, you should come by and get it.”

 

“Or you could drop it off at Edgar's.”

 

Edgar winced. He and Jimmy were on okay terms and even kind of got along well if they just didn't ever allude to their apparently shared feelings about Johnny.

 

“I'll think about it,” Jimmy said. “But only because it's your birthday. Anyway, I'm going with Tenna and Devi, so... Happy Birthday and all that shit.”

 

Edgar looked out into the dark. “Do they... _know_ that you're going with them?”

 

“No, but they're gonna find out.” He trotted after them yelling, “Hey, wait up!”

 

Edgar thought for sure he heard Tenna scream back. “Run, Devi! The undead are back!”

 

He turned back to Johnny. “Sure you don't want to go too?”

 

“No, that's okay.”

 

“Anything else you want to do?”

 

“Cake,” Johnny responded immediately. “Think your basement wants me to have a _happy_ birthday?”

 

Edgar nodded. “The odds are really quite good.”

 

“Let's go, then. I only have a few hours of birthday left.”

 

They walked in silence under dim yellowed streetlights several blocks before Johnny spoke up again.

 

“Thanks, by the way.”

 

Edgar could have puffed up and floated away. “You're welcome. I'm … really glad you liked it.”

 

“Yeah. I did.”

 

It would have been easy to add 'because I like you' on television, but Edgar discovered that without a network breaking his life into digestible thirty-minute bites, it was much harder to say something like that out loud than he imagined it would be. He hoped, though, that Johnny was as perceptive about this as he was everything else. Surely even Johnny didn't just hold hands at the bottom of a pool for no reason?

 

“I wish we weren't almost done with summer,” Johnny said, flicking the new keys between his fingers. “We have to wait for June or something to go again.”

 

“We'll find something autumn-friendly to steal keys to for you.” _I will steal as many of them as you want._

 

Johnny laughed. “What, you mean like _the school_?”

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

He'd actually forgotten. All that time he'd gone to school like clockwork every year, and here in the space of a few months, thanks to Johnny, he'd forgotten it even existed.

 

“Still, something a bit more fun, don't you think?”

 

Johnny put a hand to his chest and leaned toward Edgar with some appreciable Hollywood movie starlet flair. “Steal me a car, Edgar.”

 

Edgar laughed then, but a few months later, Tenna thought it was an amazing idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so many things I wanted to do the first time, wow. 
> 
> I used to think often about what I thought the crew would do for each other for birthdays, I used to lament that I hadn't shown Edgar transitioning into the group enough, I used to get questions all the time about the doughboys... 
> 
> I broke one of the rules I set for myself in this chapter in that I let the POV change within it, but it was important for that bit to be from Johnny's perspective for a variety of reasons. I've been doing it for two or three months now, but it's still so refreshing to get to depict this livelier and more human Johnny. I got him accidentally flinging himself from the merry go round, and actually let him fall off Edgar during the pool games, though he did get some very Johnny-esque retaliation in. I love keeping all his hang ups and ideas in mind when letting him run around and do things, and frankly I love him more and more every time I write him. Annnnd I think this also happens to Edgar! Which was something else I wanted to show - more of Edgar sincerely growing very fond of Nny and falling for him naturally versus sort of just waking up knowing he was devoted to him. 
> 
> So I got Edgar to join the group, gain Devi's approval, and give Johnny a nice gesture all at the same time! Hooray! There is more previously uncharted territory on the way, along with more familiar things. I hope you guys are still enjoying these! 
> 
>  
> 
> The song this time is:
> 
> Of Montreal - wraith pinned to the mist and other games 
> 
> Though, at one point, Johnny references lyrics from "Streets of Gold" from the Disney movie 'Oliver and Company.' But shhh, no one has to know.


	11. technicolor Jekyll and Hyde

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar gives Tenna driving lessons, and then Johnny has an idea about playing music that has the potential for massive change.

Edgar knew Johnny really lived with him when the school year was well into its first semester and Johnny was not only not living in the choir room, but was answering Edgar's phone like his own.

 

“Hi, what do you want?” Johnny lounged on the pink recliner, doodling while he conducted every call with the speakerphone option.

 

“Oh. Uh... hi, Nny.” It was Tenna, sounding a little confused. “I was actually looking for Edgar.”

 

“I'm here,” Edgar called from the couch.

 

“Hey! Okay, so, remember when you told me that you remembered how to drive?”

 

Edgar exchanged raised eyebrow glances with Johnny. “Yeeess...?”

 

“Do you maybe feel like testing that out?”

 

Johnny looked at the phone. “Do you have a car?”

 

“I may have... _obtained_ a vehicle.” Tenna answered.

 

There were things worse than Tenna being vague, but at that particular moment, Edgar could not think of many. “Obtained... how?”

 

“There was this van outside our building,” Tenna explained. “This thing has been sitting since just after Nny's birthday, and the other day, I just thought, 'No one would miss that. That could be ours.'”

 

“Does it  _work_?” Johnny asked.

 

“I may have taken the van with the keys in it when the guy came out to warm it up.”

 

“Oh, my god.” Johnny closed his sketchbook. “Let's go.”

 

Edgar laughed. “We're coming, Ten.”

 

 

 

It had snowed heavily a few days before, and even with plowing, mountains of snow still lined every street. It wasn't really the ideal environment to be trying to remember to drive based on memories from another lifetime.

 

The van was sitting in a patch of grey and brown snow that had been packed down from dozens of footprints.  Johnny stopped and stared at the van when Edgar turned to Devi and Tenna's door.

 

“What's wrong?”

 

Johnny squinted and frowned. “It... reminds me of my car.”

 

Edgar blinked at the van. It was a slightly rusted and dull gunmetal gray, and a smiley face ball hung from the rear view mirror.  “It's the same color, isn't it?”

 

“Yeah, and I had a thing...” Johnny drew a quick, tight circle motion in the air near his head. “A little head thing on the antenna, and – Fuck, my car was old enough to have an antenna.”

 

“How long ago was it, do you think?”

 

“I don't know.” Johnny shook his head. “If we hadn't _died_ , I wonder if we'd still be alive.”

 

“Um?”

 

Johnny made a frustrated hiss and then words just came pouring out of him. “I mean, are there people still alive who might have known us? Were we recent enough that we'd just be old people now if we hadn't died? What if we're buried somewhere? What if my car is still sitting in a scrap yard? What if it was recycled and now it _is_ this van? Do you ever think it's weird that we had to have been _related to people?_ ”

 

Edgar swallowed. “I'm not sure that stealing a van is meant to be accompanied by talk this heavy.”

 

Johnny looked at Edgar, and for a second, Edgar thought he might cry.  Instead, he gave Edgar a weak and crooked half-smile. “Okay. We'll save that stuff for a more serious occasion, like dinner.  Or your birthday.”

 

It was a little bit of effort to smile, but Edgar managed. “Thanks.”

 

Johnny let them in the building and they climbed the stairs to Devi and Tenna's door. The house had been divided into apartments long ago, but no one save Devi and Tenna lived there any longer. The other apartments, Tenna had told Edgar once, were damaged and unlivable after what Devi and Tenna had done to them.  Tenna did not specific what, exactly, was done, but she assured Edgar that it was horrible and they got the building to themselves.   Unfortunately, this meant that they often had to fend off people trying to demolish the building and the occasional ghost hunter. 

 

Tenna flung the door open before Edgar and Johnny could even knock. Already dressed in a puffy coat and a rainbow scarf, she beamed at them.

 

“Are you guys ready to have some _fun_?”

 

“No,” Johnny said flatly. “I think I'll go home.”

 

Tenna mimed punching his arm, but did not touch him. “I like you. Let's go, losers.”

 

She thundered down the stairs and the keys to the van jingled in her pocket. Edgar shrugged and he and Johnny followed her back out into the bright light of the winter afternoon just in time to see Tenna skip over to the van and jam a key in the door.

 

“It sticks a little,” she explained, “but if you get it just... right... then – Ah! – Here we go!”

 

She flung the side doors open and revealed the inside, beaming with pride.

 

Johnny folded his arms across his chest and tucked his hands into his elbows.  “Wow. What a pile of shit this is.”

 

There was a seat missing and the floor was full of random garbage. Edgar leaned inside and saw a long seat that spanned the width of the back was covered in plastic bags full of trash and other bags.

 

“It's not bad for _free_ ,” Tenna defended. “And we can clean it up later. Now, come on, get in.”

 

Johnny stepped back. “No fucking way.”

 

“Oh, come on, it's an adventure.”

 

“Yeah, an adventure in breathing in some kind of alien mold. I know a guy who might want to scan this thing for intelligent life.”

 

Tenna climbed into the passenger seat. “You don't know any other guys, you big baby.  Come on, Edgar, we're going on a road trip.”

 

Edgar tentatively lifted himself into the driver's seat. “You really think this is even drive-able?”

 

“It was moving when I took it! It works! It can be cleaned! You both need to lighten the fuck up!”

 

Edgar reached out to close the door and looked at Johnny, standing there folded up into his winter clothes, angry, and obviously cold.  “Come on, Nny. It'll make a good story later.”

 

Johnny 'harumph'd, kicked some snow, and then stomped angrily into the van, seething resentment.  When he tried to slide the door closed behind him, it bounced back open.

 

“What the fuck?”

 

“Yeeeeah,” Tenna said. “You'll need to hold that shut for us.”

 

“Oh, I _will,_ will I? And what if I just walk home right now?”

 

“Then you'll make Edgar _sad.”_ Tenna shot Johnny an exaggerated pouty face.

 

“Hey." Edgar bapped Tenna's shoulder with the back of his hand.  "Do not drag me into this.”  He then looked into the rear view mirror at Johnny. “I will not be sad. Do what you want.”

 

Johnny shook his head and promptly vanished onto the floor, where he hauled the door closed.  “Does Devi know you're trying to get us all killed?”

 

“More or less,” Tenna chirped.

 

“Fine,” Johnny grumbled. “Just go.”

 

“Thank yoooouuu, Nnyyy,” Tenna sang.

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

Tenna bounced in her seat and rubbed her hands together as though she was preparing to eat a massive meal. “Okay, Edgar, go, go go!”

 

“All right, here goes.”

 

Edgar turned the key and instantly remembered the sensation of an engine that wouldn't start.  It turned over after three tries, and the whole van vibrated with the hum of the engine.

 

He remembered shifting into drive, he remembered mirrors and signals and lights and gas pumps and –

 

“Are you guys wearing seat belts?”

 

Tenna cackled. “Oh, my god, you're so adorable.” She clicked her belt buckle and batted her eyes at him. “There, _Mom_. _”_

 

Edgar stuck his tongue out at her and she burst into giggles against the window. “Holy shit, I can't even handle you right now, don't look at me.”

 

Edgar ignored her. “Nny, seatbelt?”

 

“There are no belts for the 'on the floor holding the door closed' seats. I picked the sub-coach cabin option for this flight.”

 

“Okay, well... just be careful.”

 

When Tenna regained her composure, Edgar shifted into reverse and cautiously applied pressure to the gas pedal.

 

The van slid slowly backwards. “I can't believe I remember this...”

 

“I'm so fucking excited you do!” Tenna bounced in her seat even at this little movement. “We're gonna go _everywhere._ ”

 

“We can't go far, we're almost out of gas.”

 

“Then we'll go get some!”

 

“With _what,_ Tenna?” Johnny asked. “You think they'll trade a tank of gas for the keys to the janitor's closet?”

 

The van eased out onto the road, and Edgar applied the breaks enough to send Tenna hurling forward and for the side door to burst open.

 

“Ah! Sorry! You guys okay?”

 

“Yeah.”  Johnny's voice was muffled, and coming from the back of Edgar's chair.

 

Tenna patted the dashboard. “We're cool, just drive.”

 

“I haven't... well, I haven't done this in a while, and the breaks in here are more sensitive than my car was...”

 

He managed to angle the van around a snow drift and onto the road. Finally, after a death and part of another lifetime, he drove again.

 

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy _shit_ ,” Tenna screeched. “Can you _imagine_ where we could go in this?”

 

Edgar nodded. “Yes. Approximately ten miles.”

 

Tenna stuck her lower lip out. “Okay, we're really gonna have to have a talk about your terminal case of realism.”

 

Johnny shifted against the back of Edgar's chair. “Don't go too fast, I can feel the wind resistance on this thing already.”

 

Edgar gripped the wheel a little tighter. “Shit, will you be okay?”

 

“Yeah, for now. Just drive.”

 

Tenna raised an eyebrow. “Really, Edgar?”

 

“Stop it, Ten.”

 

“I jus --”

 

“Not a fucking word.”

 

Everything came back as he drove.  Within fifteen minutes of circling the neighborhood, he felt as though he'd been driving for longer than his current life had even lasted. When he glanced into the rear view mirror, the faces of the people who had just re-taught him to drive looked back.

 

As he passed the school, Tenna bounced in her seat again and clapped her hands like a seal. “Ooh, ooh! Let's visit Jimmy!”

 

“Let's not,” Johnny mumbled.

 

“I'll switch with you if we do,” Tenna offered. “You can sit here and I'll hold the door.”

 

Edgar felt intensely guilty about how pleased the idea of that made him. Not that he didn't really like Tenna - she was his favorite of the group outside of Johnny – but driving with Johnny next to him would be like some old times he only barely recalled.  Someday, he might even be able to take Johnny to get Freezies in this without anyone else...

 

_Fuck._

 

He pulled into the school's parking lot and parked.  “Just switch anyway and give him a chance to sit up here and enjoy this before I start trying to teach you this.”

 

Tenna unbuckled her seat belt and poked Edgar's shoulder as she stepped out of the van. “I see you, Edgar. Don't think I don't.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

Johnny slid into the passenger seat and looked at Edgar with something unsettling in his eyes. Edgar inclined his head and made eye-contact, hoping to offer concern without alerting Tenna.  Johnny shook his head and gazed out the window.

 

“It's nothing,” he said. “This is just familiar.”

 

Johnny's expression said there was something, however.

 

“You sure?”

 

“Yeah, it's...” He made a fluttery upward motion with fingers near the side of his head.

 

“Like before with the-”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Tenna settled in behind Edgar. “Fuck,” she said, “did you guys just psychically communicate? I didn't realize you had gotten that bad.”

 

Edgar rolled his eyes and kept talking to Johnny. “Are we okay?”

 

Johnny bit his lip and nodded.

 

Edgar wasn't convinced. “Do you-?”

 

Johnny just looked at him, and it was enough that he knew to drop it.

 

“Got it.”

 

“So, I'm still good back here,” Tenna said. “Just in case you forgot about me.”

 

“Sure, okay.”

 

The town shrank in the van. Edgar thought he knew things a fair distance from his house, but in the van he could get to them in seconds.  Roads he used to consider large or particularly significant became nothing when he was behind a wheel.

 

Johnny smiled more the longer the they drove, which put Edgar slightly more at ease.

 

“You know what I want to do someday?” Johnny was looking out the window, but that didn't matter terribly, it wasn't like Edgar could turn to look back at him.

 

“What?”

 

“Go though a drive through.”

 

Edgar laughed. “That's surprisingly mundane of you.”

 

Johnny's shoulders shook along to his fragment of a laugh.  “We'll get Tenna to make us up as dead people or something. Put Jimmy in a tutu, I don't know.”

 

“I like that dead people and Jimmy in a tutu are the same level of weird to you,” Edgar said.

 

Tenna piped up from the back. “Are you kidding? Jimmy in a tutu is a lot worse. Like, _just_ a tutu? What if the acne goes all the way down?”

 

Johnny twitched and lurched forward. “Oh, fuck, what is _wrong_ with you?” He flailed an arm at Edgar and hit his shoulder a few times. “Please drive faster and fling her onto the highway.”

 

“You can't fling me on the highway until you teach me to drive this thing!”

 

Johnny laughed into the thin blue scarf around his neck. “Ten, you're practically deafening, rein in the enthusiasm a little bit.”

 

“Oh, she wasn't that loud,” Edgar said.

 

Tenna and Johnny both laughed at him and he strained between watching the road and trying to judge their faces. 

 

“What? What did I say?”

 

“He doesn't mean my _voice_ ,” Tenna said.  “Maybe I can teach you about this if you're teaching me how to drive.”

 

_“I'm_ going to teach him,” Johnny snapped.

 

“Oh, yeah? With _what_?”

 

Johnny whirled around in his seat and lunged at Tenna. Edgar panicked, slamming the breaks and sending them all crashing forward, but with his vicious expression and determination to tear his way out of his seat belt, Johnny didn't even seem to notice.

 

“That's not funny!”

 

“Chill out, I'm sorry!”

 

Edgar put his arm in between them. “Hey, can we not do this while I'm driving?”

 

“Okay, _Mom,_ ” Tenna whined.

 

Edgar couldn't read Johnny's eyes, but his gaze felt like it could tear Edgar into strips.  Johnny slammed himself back against the seat and glared out the front window.

 

“Just go.”

 

They drove in awkward silence through a neighborhood just on the edge of Edgar's exploration limits.

 

Tenna, mercifully, tried her best to be cheery. “So, this isn't hard to learn, right?”

 

Edgar shrugged.  “To be honest, most of it is learning how not to murder anyone.”

 

“What a shame,” Johnny muttered.

 

“We're going to need gas before I can teach you anything, though.”

 

Tenna 'hmm'd against the seat and Edgar swore he felt it. “I probably can't drive through a window and demand some from the 24-7,” Tenna said wistfully.  She kicked Johnny's chair.  “Do you have any cash register money on you?”

 

Johnny rolled his eyes. “Maybe I can ask Pepito for a loan.”

 

Tenna laughed. “Who's –?”

 

“Wait.” Johnny's gaze shot up to Edgar. “Take us to the school.”

 

Tenna tried again to get some information. “What are we –?”

 

“We're going, Tenna, hang on.”

 

She gave Edgar a look in the rear view mirror that she must have learned from Devi.

 

 

 

Edgar had barely stopped the van in front of the school before Johnny popped his door open and hopped out.

 

“I'll be right back,” he said.

 

Edgar went to unbuckle his seat belt. “Do you want me to –?”

 

“I'll _be right back._ ”

 

“Okay.”

 

He slammed the door behind him and Edgar and Tenna sat in silence until Johnny vanished into the school.  Once Johnny was gone, Tenna slid to the front seat, shaking her head and 'tsk'-ing.

 

Edgar frowned at her. “What now?”

 

“You've got it bad, and it's sad.”

 

“It is not.”

 

“It _is._ ” He'd never seen Tenna look so serious about anything else but infection. “It's been _months._ Does he know?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “I don't know. I can't really tell.”

 

Tenna nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I guess you wouldn't, with him.”

 

She'd been kinder to Edgar from the start than any of the others, though he had no idea why.

 

“Tell me why it's a bad idea. Tell me _really_  why.”

 

"I thought you knew!" Tenna leaned forward and rested her elbows against the dashboard. “You can't see it yourself? You know what he's like by now. _Look_ at him. _Listen_ to him.”

 

Edgar's chest tightened a little and he leaned into the steering wheel, sighing.  “I … do. That seems to have the opposite effect that you think it should.”

 

Tenna tried to smile at him, but it was obvious she didn't feel it. “Have you looked at Jimmy?”

 

“Uh...”

 

She swatted his arm.  “Not the way you look at Nny, dipshit.  I mean in general.  Jimmy adored him – still does – and now he gets off being hit with things just because it's Nny doing the hitting.”

 

“He doesn't treat me like Jimmy.” It was a weak defense, even he knew that.

 

“I know.  It's still a bad idea.  I _like_ Jimmy, and I like you, too.  Hell, I like _Nny_ , but I still know he's kind of scary to like at all, let alone like this.  Devi says _/i'm with the band, baby/_ make more sense to her.”

 

Edgar blinked. “What?”

 

“I said she always says even _I_ make more sense to her than Nny does.”

 

“No, you... you said something about a band.”

 

Her eyes widened and she was _definitely_ feeling the smile now. “Did I?”

 

Edgar nodded and Tenna bit her lip mischievously.

 

“Don't tell Nny,” she whispered. “He'll be angry.”

 

Outside the van, there was still no movement from the school, and no sign of Johnny.

 

“Is this about what he wanted to teach me?”

 

Tenna shrugged one shoulder and reclined into her seat. “You can't really teach it anyway.  He probably just wanted to be the first to see it.”

 

“What _is_ it?”

 

“Just songs. Special ones. They're person-specific.”

 

“So... songs that play for just one person?”

 

“No, just _in_ one person. You heard a line of mine just now, and Johnny was hearing it super loud earlier because I was so excited about driving.”

 

“Do you control it?”

 

“Nope.” She put her feet up on the dashboard. “It just sort of plays and changes key or tempo with moods. We can all tell when Devi is really angry, and we can usually hear Jimmy coming from like a block away, his is just always cranked up to eleven.”

 

Edgar thought back to Johnny saying Jimmy was coming and pulling Edgar into the bushes near Pepito's house.

 

“That clears up a lot, actually.”

 

Tenna laughed and patted Edgar's shoulder. “Aww, were we all being weirdly psychic at you?”

 

“Something like that. I guess I just thought maybe Nny was special or something.”

 

“Pfffft, he'd love you to think that, and he'll go right on feeding into that idea if you let him.”  She crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window toward the school.  “He _is_ really sensitive to the songs for some reason, though. He hears them the most, the loudest, the … clearest? He likes to remind us as often as possible.”

 

“Do I have one?”

 

Tenna looked a little pained. “Prooobably?”

 

“What makes them show up? Why did I just hear that bit of yours?”

 

“I'm probably not the person you should be asking about this stuff unless you think you can convince Nny it's all new to you when _he_ tells you about it. He really wanted to show you, and it's sort of best just to let him do what he wants.  He's really whiny and bitchy when he's upset and it's not worth dealing with that for the pleasure of telling you about our head noise.”

 

“I wonder sometimes if you guys would all be friends if you were visible and normal.”

 

Tenna shrugged. “No use worrying about it, I think. It is how it is.”

 

Edgar sighed and continued staring out the window.

 

“Do you want to drive when he gets back?”

 

“Fucksss yessss, I do.”

 

“Here, let's switch seats.”

 

After a quick lap around the van, Tenna buckled herself into the driver's seat and gazed defiantly through the windshield. “I will rule the road with an iron fist.”

 

And then she looked at Edgar and stopped.

 

“What? What is the introspective bullshit face?”

 

“You really think I'll end up like Jimmy?”

 

Again, he saw genuine sympathy on her face. Tenna was the only real person he'd ever seen it on. “You're a nice dude, Edgar. Nny sort of... isn't. Nny's primary concern is Nny. We all know this, and we work around it.”

 

“I can work around it, too,” Edgar defended.

 

“None of us are making sad TV romance face at him, though.”

 

Immediately, he felt his cheeks get hot. “Fuck, am I?”

 

She smiled. “A bit, yeah. We're all giving you a hard time because we like you. Well, maybe except Jimmy. But me and Devi, anyway. I don't know what Nny's doing with you, whether he's flirting or trying to condemn you, but just pay attention. You seem like good people.”

 

“Do none of you trust him?”

 

“Sure we do, but we also _know_ him, and there's a difference.”

 

Edgar nodded, more for himself than for Tenna.  “Yeah. Do you think it means anything that he just... lives with me?”

 

Tenna held her hands up. “Hey, I'm not the Nny expert, this is just general experience talking. You want a seasoned warrior of the Nny Feelings Forecast, you want Devi.  She knows him best, and he tells her more than he tells the rest of us.”

 

_Except keys, and books, and mind-wiping horned demon men, and possessed basements._ “I see.”

 

“Maybe you'll catch up with him living with you, who knows.”

 

“Right.” Edgar nodded and let his reflections come into focus on the window.  “So, say I... get what I want.”

 

“And what, Nny becomes your...?” She frowned and scrunched up her nose. “Jeez, there should be a word for this that isn't weird-sounding.”

 

“Boyfriend?” Edgar tried. Though as soon as he said it, it sounded strange.

 

“Well, yeah, _like that_ , but for Nny.”

 

“I think I'm lost.”

 

Tenna smiled at him. “Then you don't know him enough to be going after him, I think. It's weird that you've known him this long and it hasn't come up, though.”

 

“What do you-?”

 

She held her arms up in an 'x' in front of her. “Nope. That's his business to tell you.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“But you were asking something about 'if.'”

 

“Just wondered if Devi and/or Jimmy would come after me in my sleep if I had some kind of... other relationship with him.”

 

Tenna tapped her chin. “Odds are good. Alternately, ask again later.”

 

“... You're just quoting a Magic 8 Ball at me.”

 

She grinned, and then there was a flash of reflected light over the windows and Johnny emerged from behind one of the school's glass doors. He hopped inside the van and held a credit card out between Edgar and Tenna.

 

“Holy shit.” Tenna grabbed the card and gazed at it in reverent wonder. “Where did you get this?”

 

“A computer lab.”

 

_Dib._

 

“How the fuck do you-?”

 

“Let's just learn to drive, Tenna.”

 

Johnny hunched back down to the floor to hold the door closed again and Edgar gave his first instructions for how to operate the van. They jolted and lurched out of the little path in front of the school and Tenna seemed to have a particular blindness when it came to stop signs, but she learned quickly. She ran over a curb or two while following the directions to the gas station, but otherwise did no one any harm. Unfortunately, this was only a small town with very little actual traffic. How Edgar was going to teach a girl who ignored small town stop signs to handle a highway, he didn't know.

 

But, first and foremost: gas.

 

They pulled up next to a pump and Tenna gleefully sprung from the van with the credit card in hand. Edgar and Johnny watched her swipe it, and then saw her jumping up and down when it was accepted.

 

“ _I am gonna pump some fucking gas!!_ ” she screamed across the plaza, hands dramatically on her hips. No one so much as looked at her.

 

Edgar turned around in his seat to look at Johnny on the floor. “Dib?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“How did he do that? And how did you convince him?”

 

Johnny shifted his shoulders with a theatrical sort of slink. “Oh, you know, sad eyes, hair toss, flash a little leg...”

 

Edgar laughed. “Oh, of course. You have all that hair to work with, after all.”

 

Johnny smiled back at him. “I told him we were obtaining a vehicle _'to expand our search for the supernatural'_ , and asked what he'd be prepared to donate to the cause.”

 

“That's horrible."

 

Johnny straightened his posture and placed a hand on his chest. "You're too kind."

 

"What made you think he would give you money? Or even _could,_ for that matter?”

 

“Didn't you _see_ all that equipment?  Way too advanced for this shitty school.  He had to get it somewhere else.  He also had custom printed business cards, and you can't just steal those right out of the office supply store with 'Agent Mothman – Paranormal Investigator' already on them.”

 

Edgar nodded. “Okay, okay. But that he just handed you a card, and that he could put money on it... This just seems sort of stupid.”

 

“Dib's not stupid, he's advanced.”

 

Tenna flopped back into her seat and slammed the door behind her. “We have a full tank, motherfuckers. We can drive to places we have _never been to_.”

 

Edgar clapped his hands together and mockingly mimed Tenna's tone. “To be not seen by _even more_ people!”

 

Tenna glared at him and stuck out her lower lip. “What have I told you about that terminal reality problem of yours, sir?”

 

Edgar crossed his arms and settled back in his seat.  " _I_ thought it was funny."

 

“Find us a drive-in,” Johnny said. “We can make Devi and Jimmy angry.”

 

Tenna waved her hand dismissively.  “Oh, that would never work. What would we say, 'we had some kind of B-movie threesome'? Devi knows you'd never do anything with me, and Jimmy gets upset when you breathe without him, so we'd accomplish the same results by not going.”

 

“Oh, are you and Devi a thing?” For some reason, this put Tenna and Devi's 'don't chase Johnny' mantra in a new light.

 

Tenna scrunched up her face. “Eh, its kind of a work in progress."

 

Johnny laughed and Tenna looked back at him and grinned. "Am I fucking clever or what?"

 

"Stunning," he said. 

 

Whatever this was, it was utterly lost on Edgar.

 

Tenna turned back around. "Anyway, she's not the jealous sort, so this kind of shit wouldn't work on her anyway.”

 

“Huh,” Johnny said from the back.

 

Edgar watched Tenna glare dramatically into the rear view mirror. “What, Nny? Do I have competition? Do we need to fight? I'm pretty sure I can take you.”

 

“No, fuck you, do what you want.”

 

“I'mma remember you said that.” She braced her back against her seat and gripped the wheel dramatically. “When are we ready for highway?”

 

“You can't,” Johnny said before Edgar could try to explain it nicely.

 

“Oh, and can _you_ drive?” Tenna asked.

 

“I _can_ , actually, but I was talking about this door.  The wind resistance when it's broken is too much.  It won't hold on a highway, and I'm not getting smeared across the pavement during my first time on one.”

 

Tenna pulled slowly out of the gas station.

 

“Fine. We'll find something _else_ , then.”

 

She frowned deeply, and turned toward the west end of town, where the group had rarely ventured beyond the abandoned playground.

 

It was faint, but Edgar heard a melody floating in the air as Tenna stewed in her bitterness.

 

“ _but that's okay, I'm with the band, baby  
I'll follow you anyway”_

 

 

Tenna did not kill them, and even drove them home after they discovered a few new places to haunt, to invade, and to just fuck around in. There were alcoves of interesting things in this tiny town if one had the means to get to them. 

 

She only had to go three blocks to get there, so Edgar felt okay about sending Tenna home alone.

 

“Don't hurt anyone on your way home,” he told her. “And, seriously, do _not_ go anywhere else.”

 

“I won't, but only because you asked.  I'm good at this, yeah? Maybe I've got weird past-life driving abilities too?”

 

He smiled at her. It was hard not to be happy that Tenna was excited.  “It would explain how quickly you picked up this much.”

 

She looked out the windshield and twisted her fingers around the steering wheel. “I was  _born_ for this.”

 

Johnny said nothing, but hummed a small snippet of the song he'd been singing when he first met Edgar.  _I was born to stare at who stares back at me._

 

Edgar patted the side of the van's door like it was Tenna's shoulder. “We'll see you tomorrow for more, Ten.”

 

“Damn right, you will.”

 

She drove off and Edgar heard her lay on the horn a few seconds later. He could only assume she was passing Jimmy's trailer.

 

“She's going to get herself killed,” he said.

 

“ _You_ let her go home like that.”

 

Edgar shrugged and started toward the door. “I'll hear from Devi about it later, I'm sure.”

 

“Right.”

 

Edgar stopped and looked intently at Johnny. “What? What's that?”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow at him. “What's _what?”_

 

“You did the 'I'm thinking deep thoughts under this generic monosyllabic response' thing.”

 

Johnny blinked. “I have a thing like that?”

 

Edgar opened the door and Johnny ducked inside in front of him.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, you do.”

 

It was strange to even realize that he knew it, but he knew lots of Johnny's mannerisms that he didn't even need to think about now.  It'd only been a few months, but he was starting to recognize differences in the way Johnny stared at things because he was interested in them versus staring because he wasn't actually looking.  He knew the particular twitch that meant Johnny was about to disapprove of something, and he knew the differences between the little verbal cues that either meant 'ask me more' or 'fuck off' that had once sounded exactly the same to him.

 

“Maybe I spend too much time with you,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar's heart sank. “It was an observation, not a criticism!”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I'm kidding. The school isn't heated at night, so this is much better.”

 

_Heat? Really?_ “Oh. Okay then.”

 

“I was thinking about Devi and being jealous, since you asked.”

 

It was a struggle to sound neutral about this topic. “What about it?”

 

“Lots of shit.” He flopped dramatically on the pink recliner and burrowed his shoulder into it. “How would things change if she and Tenna were something? I – he? –  _someone_ really liked Devi. If this were some other time, or I was some other me, maybe this  _would_ be competition.  And then I become like Jimmy, pathetically following after something I'm not going to get with no clear plan about what I'd do even if I got it.”

 

Edgar winced as Johnny continued.

 

“Something happened with Devi, before.  I did something to her, or said something to her.  I remember her in a bookstore, and her with my car, and then there's a mirror and a phone call and I don't know how that's supposed to fit together, but I know she hated me.”

 

“Are you sure you want to approach all this?” He hoped to convey his concern and not his relief that Johnny wasn't confessing having a thing for Devi.

 

Johnny shook his head. “No, but I don't think I really have a choice anymore.”

 

At least, Edgar thought, he could remove the initial worry. “If it helps, I don't think anything would change. They already live together, go everywhere together, are hardly ever seen without the other's company, so -” What he'd said hit him abruptly and he clamped his mouth closed.  Johnny blinked up at him from the pink chair and then quickly glanced away.  Apparently, the obvious comparison hadn't been lost on him either.

 

Edgar coughed and struggled through the end of his thought. “So, um... we wouldn't notice. If they were. Together, I mean.”

 

Johnny nodded. “I just don't think... I don't think...”

 

“What?”

 

“We wouldn't be able to avoid it.  And it's...” He hunched his shoulders and pulled his knees up close to his chest.  “It's a dumb idea.”

 

Edgar sat slowly on the arm of the couch. “Why?”

 

“Because this is  _it!_ There's only the five of us! We've already – Why do this  _now_ when we're young and stupid and can ruin everything?  Why ruin it at all?  Why obsess over it or give it any more thought than acknowledging the idea that our brains are full of surging chemicals and failing electrical signals?”

 

There was something not quite right about this particular rant. There was a tone missing, or maybe one present, that didn't match any of the others like it. This sounded like weirdly personal anger, like Johnny was working on convincing Edgar so as to better justify convincing himself.

 

“Maybe it's harder for them to see a long term effect when they don't remember ever existing before now.  It's not their fault they don't remember the way we do.”

 

“That doesn't help, that's not – Fuck.”

 

Edgar watched Johnny twist his fingers into his shirt for several seconds before he thought they ought to leave this topic behind.

 

“What can you teach me about the songs?”

 

Johnny picked his head up. “What songs?”

 

“The ones just in people. Tenna told me a little bit while you were getting money from Dib.”

 

Johnny sat sideways in the chair, his arms twisted around himself in a spiral. With one arm over his chest he rubbed his shoulder.  “I asked you when I first got here how you felt about getting noticed.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I didn't know everything then, though, and I think staying with us might have changed your answer.”

 

Edgar leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Is this related to the songs or one of your clever redirections?”

 

Johnny laughed bitterly against the chair and closed his eyes. “It's related.”

 

“I don't have strong enough feelings about 'getting noticed',” Edgar confessed.  “In my mind, that you and the others can see me is 'noticed' enough. I used to wish just for _one_ person, so  _four,_ plus, I guess Dib and Pepito and Todd?  That's good for me.  I can understand that you guys wouldn't view the addition of me as enough, though.”

 

“Oh, for fucking – Don't do that.”

 

“Do what?”

 

“The 'I'm not really significant' thing.” He pulled his arm away from his chest and pointed emphatically at Edgar. “The next time you feel like doing that, you do the exact fucking opposite and you treat yourself like the most important piece of shit who ever lived, you got it?”

 

This was oddly inspirational and, if he was honest, was not really helping the intensity of Edgar's continuing crush.

 

“I'll... give that a try.”

 

“Good.”

 

There were several seconds of silence before Edgar prompted Johnny again.

 

“So songs? Noticed?”

 

“Right. So you wouldn't care if other people could see us?”

 

“No, I don't think so.”

 

“I keep thinking if we made some songs, that someone would see us.”

 

“I-”

 

Johnny spun himself around in the chair so he was sitting in it properly, and leaned forward, gesturing to Edgar.  “If we made something, all of us, even if it was just a version of the things we can hear all the time, it might find its way into people who _aren't_ us.  We're all just sort of barely here, but if we were all doing the same thing...  It's easy to be invisible when you're one person, and it's easy to be invisible among thousands, but I think that five?  Five people all doing the same thing, combined with the way people can hear songs in their heads?  Assuming anyone else is like us, I mean.  We might be able to break out of this stuff.”

 

Edgar tilted his head and tried to sort out what he'd heard.  “Admittedly, I don't know as much about this as you, but haven't we already done plenty of things as five people that didn't get us seen?”

 

“Yes, but not  _one thing_ .  We're so good at breaking up the tasks, and it's – the things that bring us closest to overcoming invisibility, the things that will  _transcend_ us, are the things we create.  Other people can see that graffiti wall.  We've seen them make marks there too, and we've responded to them.  Other people can see our  _blood_ .  They can see Devi's paint and my drawings and Jimmy's vandalism, and Tenna's weird stuffed animals, and if we were  _all_ making  _one thing,_ one  _coherent whole thing_ , we might get to the other side just on the _feeling_ of doing something like that alone.  We could make other people hear us, and then they'd have to  _see_ us.”

 

“I'm not sure.  It doesn't seem a clear enough difference to me.”

 

Johnny snorted in frustration and balled his hands into fists. “Yes, it  _does!_ I  _know_ you've experienced it, I've  _seen you_ !” He held his arms out, palms open as though Edgar could see the examples spread out in his hands. “When I make you sing with me in here, and with everyone else in the choir room. I  _know_ you've felt the same thing. Something about doing music with other people is different than Tenna raiding a buffet table while we trip people. We need something planned, something performed, something unified and connected, and something strange enough that we'll have no option but to  _feel so much_ that the stuff in us deafens other people and we become visible.”

 

_And this might make everyone happy, not just Johnny._

 

He didn't know whether it would work.  He didn't even really understand it.  But Johnny was passionate and certain and Edgar wanted to help him do whatever this would be.  “Okay. Then maybe we should do that.”

 

Johnny laughed weakly and tucked his arms back around himself. “We can't yet. But we could get ready.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Will you play for me?”

 

“What, _now?”_

 

“If you want, but I just meant in general.  In this thing, whatever it is, will you play? Will you do it?”

 

As though Johnny had even really needed to ask him. “Yes.”

 

“Even if it means we lose something in the process?”

 

He hated to think of what he'd lose, but as long as that thing wasn't Johnny, he could handle it.

 

“Yes.”

 

Johnny held out his hand.  Even for Edgar, who was given the opportunity more often, it was rare to be invited to touch Johnny rather than to have him just abruptly decide that he would be the one doing the touching. “Promise?”

 

Edgar reached out slowly enough to give Johnny time to pull his hand away, but Johnny took Edgar's hand in his.

 

“Promise.”

 

Johnny shook Edgar's hand firmly and Edgar's heart beat directly in his ears as that strange burn raced through his arms again.

 

 

 

 

A few days later, clustered around the heater in the choir room, Johnny shared the idea with the others.  He sat on top of the heater itself, next to Edgar, with the others seated around below them in desk chairs.

 

“So, we'd be in a band?” Jimmy's eyes lit up like a child's in a Christmas movie.

 

Tenna frowned and slumped against her chair. “I don't play anything.”

 

Johnny kicked her chair. “You also aren't totally invisible.”

 

“I still want to do cool shit.”

 

“Can you make us look cool?” Jimmy asked. “Like give us zombie faces or something?”

 

Devi raised an eyebrow. “You want to be a band of zombies?”

 

“Yeah, we could just call ourselves 'Of Zombies' and then--”

 

“No,” Johnny snapped.

 

Jimmy sank into his chair to match Tenna.

 

Johnny continued explaining. “The biggest issue here is what we'd lose.  If we're all more visible, we're going to lose some means of obtaining food and stuff, but probably before we gain things to replace it.”

 

“Which,” Edgar jumped in, “is where we're hoping my basement will come in handy during a transition period.”

 

Tenna's eyes opened wide and she pointed back and forth between Edgar and Johnny. “Did you guys sit and plan this all out together?”

 

Edgar made brief and confused eye-contact with Johnny and then blinked back at Tenna. “Yes?”

 

Tenna pointed between her eyes and Edgar's a few times, staring intensely, but said nothing else.

 

“Anyway,” Johnny continued, “if this works, it's going to uproot a lot of the basic shit that we do, so we need to decide if it's worth it.”

 

Jimmy leaned forward and waved his hand a little to request attention.  “So I should bleed on someone while I still can?”

 

Devi slid her chair away from his. “No, Jimmy. No you should not fucking do that.”

 

“No arguments from me,” Johnny told him. “Tell me how it goes if you do it.  But if _this_ works, there's going to be a point where we can't just walk into the 24/7 and take what we want anymore because people could actually take us away for it. We could lose this place, even.”

 

Tenna looked uneasy. “I'm not sure I'm wild about this plan.”

 

“You have to think of the benefits,” Edgar said.

 

“Says the guy who has nothing to lose regardless,” Jimmy protested.

 

Johnny kicked Jimmy's knee, though it more a nudge in that it wasn't violent. “Hey, do me a favor?”

 

“Mm?”

 

“Shut up.”

 

Jimmy pulled his lips back and made a big show of making disgusting faces in retaliation.

 

Devi snapped her fingers to take attention away from Jimmy's facial freak show. “Hey, as much as I'd normally rather stick a fork in my eye than say this, Jimmy is not entirely out of line here.  Why bother accepting Edgar's endorsement of this plan when he'll be able to keep hiding in his house no matter what?”

 

“I'm actually not sure I will, though,” Edgar said. “If I become more obvious, that house may start generating bills instead of food and clothes. The house could become visible with me and I'd have the same problem you and Tenna do now with people wanting to do things with it.”

 

Tenna thrust her heels up onto the heater between Johnny and Edgar. “Then what's in this for us, really?”

 

Edgar tried to appeal to Tenna's sense of adventure. “Think drive-thru at ice cream places and horrible fast food.  Think renting a hotel room while on the road to somewhere far away instead of sleeping in that van. Think about maybe knowing more than four other people for the rest of your life. Think about showing other people the things you make, and them following you around with weird fannish devotion.”

 

“Nny already has a few of those last ones,” Tenna replied. “I'm not sure that's a great incentive.”

 

“Then forget that part and think about the rest of it, come on, stop being difficult.”

 

“It won't make any difference to me anyway, I guess” she said, shrugging. “I'm gonna sit and be variably visible regardless, so it's up to you guys.  I'll go along with whatever you want, even if it's stupid, and if you somehow get too visible, I'll help you re-haunt everything we need.”

 

Devi smiled at Tenna. It might have been the first time Edgar had seen a smile that honest on Devi.

 

Johnny pressed his palms together and dipped his finger tips in Tenna's direction in a quiet show of gratitude.

 

“So, you guys should think about this,” he said.

 

Jimmy squeaked his boot on the floor. “Well, if _you_ want to do it, I'm on board.”

 

Johnny smiled indulgently. “Of _course_ you are.”

 

“You should actually think about it, though, you fuckhead,” Devi insisted, shoving Jimmy's shoulder. “This means everything would change.”

 

Her words snapped in Edgar's head as he remembered Johnny on the roof. _“But this way they'll change in a way that I like.”_

 

“It's okay,” Jimmy said. “If everything changes for you guys, too, then it's like nothing changed at all, 'cause we're all the same.”

 

Tenna rocked her head from side to side a few times. “I'm... I'm not sure I follow that logic, but whatever works for you, Jimmy.”

 

Johnny leaned forward and braced himself with his hands on his knees. “You're the only holdout, Devi.”

 

“You're not giving me a lot of choices here.”

 

“Neither is being invisible.  This is the only way out.”

 

She shook her head, and then heaved a resigned sigh. “Okay. I'm in.”

 

Johnny held his hand out to her, and she blinked in surprise. “Promise?”

 

Devi showed just as much hesitation to touch Johnny as Edgar had, but took his hand. “Promise.”

 

Jimmy's eyes grew wide and he shot up to attention when Johnny offered him the same hand. “Promise, Jimmy?”

 

He took Johnny's hand with so much enthusiasm that Johnny nearly toppled from his seat on the heater. “Fuckin' _promise._ ”

 

Last was Tenna, who he needed to lean a little to reach thanks to her wonky posture. “Tenna, my dear, same question.”

 

She slapped his hand in a kind of horizontal high-five, and then took his hand properly. “Promise.”

 

 

 

 

 

It was more than a little possible that Edgar was imagining Johnny's fondness for him. Johnny's strange performance mode made anything possible, really, and they were, in fact, pretending to perform.

 

When Johnny decided they should all get noticed, any mention or hint that he might want to go after the key or Pepito vanished.  Johnny usually had to be reminded that they were still issues between all his strange episodes of flirt-singing.  Jimmy still stared daggers into Edgar any time Johnny so much as breathed in Edgar's direction, and Tenna still made significant eyebrows at the same time.  Devi, Edgar was forced to conclude, was just beaming stoic hate in his direction more keenly than usual.

 

The first time they practiced anything even remotely resembling a song with their stolen or questionably obtained instruments, Johnny hovered near Edgar's keyboard for most of the duration.  He claimed it was because Devi and Jimmy were too loud for him to hear Edgar's playing otherwise.  Tenna called bullshit by disguising it as a sneeze, and Johnny either did not notice, or chose not to dignify it with a response.

 

Honestly, her reaction was exciting. If _Tenna_ thought that Johnny was making excuses to spend time near Edgar, it could mean good things for him.  She was so good at seeing Edgar's bullshit a mile away, and she had some experience with Johnny.  Unfortunately, Tenna noticing also meant that Jimmy wouldn't be easily distracted with alternative excuses for close proximity and more touching than Johnny usually invited.  Edgar could truthfully report that nothing was going on, but everything else - Is something about to be going on? Was that flirting or theatrics?  Why do you still live together? -  was a little shaky.

 

When it became almost impossible to distinguish performing Johnny from casual regular Johnny, Tenna and Devi could be seen frequently widening their eyes threateningly in Edgar's direction, silently insisting that he fix whatever was going on.  Edgar, however, was not only powerless to stop Johnny from doing what he wanted to do, but he also had no interest in doing so.  Johnny continued right on sliding up next to Edgar to make him listen to something on his headphones, kept right on leaning over Edgar's shoulder to see things in Edgar's hands, and merrily continued poking Edgar's shoulder to get his attention instead of snapping in his face. The day Johnny hooked his chin over Edgar's shoulder to look at the latest issue of Edgar's favorite ridiculous cryptid magazine, Edgar thought his heart would explode right along with Jimmy's veins.

 

However, for whatever magical Johnny reason, it was also the first time Johnny noticed what he was doing.  Edgar felt him take a sharp breath and then he recoiled away from Edgar with such force that his chair tipped backward and catapulted him onto the floor.

 

“Holy shit, are you okay?!”

 

Johnny waved Edgar away as he peeled himself up from the linoleum. “I'm good, I'm good.”

 

Edgar wanted to ask what had happened, but he already knew most of the answer.  When Johnny picked himself up, the look in his eyes said everything:

 

_We're not talking about it._

 

Like everything else that was important – keys, books, memories, Pepito, Dib – Edgar's relationship with Johnny was being relegated to the 'we do not speak of it' pile. The only time any of it came up at all was when Johnny had an attack from his old memories and needed reminding of who he was. Edgar did what he was told he could do to help, which was simply talking, and occasionally humming a song. How Johnny conveniently ignored that everything he utilized to deal with the attacks was also everything he actively ignored at any other time, Edgar didn't know.  All Edgar _did_ know was that the others were to know nothing about Johnny's attacks, and that playing and singing with the others kept the attacks at bay.

 

At first, Edgar had doubted whether they could really become good enough to break the barriers of visibility, but with Johnny needing the group playing and singing in order to maintain himself as a functioning human, they were playing so often that they were doing remarkably well and actually sounding _good._

 

Jimmy began easing up on both his overly enthusiastic guitar and his antagonistic treatment of Edgar.  He still made protests, but there was less venom in them.  Edgar wondered frequently whether Jimmy could sense, perhaps through the songs Edgar had yet to hear more of, that the practices were for Johnny's benefit, and thus decided to switch his focus.  As nasty as Jimmy could be, he was strangely capable of dropping anything if it meant doing good for Johnny.

 

Edgar wondered just as frequently what, if anything, made him and Jimmy different.

 

Devi and Tenna, while less obsessed with Johnny's well-being than Edgar and Jimmy, also seemed remarkably dedicated to the group and they participated with no complaints, even with Tenna's short attention span and her intense desire to soar along a highway. Tenna didn't play, but she helped them identify weaknesses, suggested improvements, and fashioned any of the strange accessories the others asked for to help them 'get into it'.  She may have also been a key element in obtaining instruments, though Devi wouldn't tell Edgar any more than that about it.

 

It was Tenna who told Johnny he was lingering with Edgar while he sang, and Tenna who told him he was changing his routine too much between practices.  She tried to explain it one day when they were all gathered in Edgar's previously unused garage. 

 

“It's good to change your approach, but there's got to be some sort of core thing that never changes, or else we could be _any_ old group.  You need some kind of essential personality.  If you're going to be the person people identify as the front of this thing, you have to consider what approach you want to sell!”

 

Rather than be impressed by Tenna's vision, Johnny yelled at her. “Then you fucking sing it!”

 

“The singing is fine! You just have to decide if you're going for hanging on everyone or no one, any other way makes it look like I'm seeing something I shouldn't.  Unless you want to create some kind of relationship for your stage persona, I'm telling you that you went from spending too much time near Edgar to totally ignoring him!”

 

“You _just_ fucking said I was doing too much with-”

 

“And now it's not enough! If you need to do this, do it fucking consistently! Or else just sing at me like a normal person.”

 

“I can't just sing with you staring at me.”

 

Devi tapped a symbol and rolled her eyes. “I have some bad news for you regarding the meaning of the word 'audience'.”

 

Johnny twirled around and gestured at Devi with the microphone Tenna had stolen from the theater department.  “This is totally different. Tenna's one person, staring and judging. A whole audience is just a blob.”

 

Tenna laughed. “Do you need me to make myself a blob costume?”

 

“Oh, fuck you,” Johnny snapped.

 

Edgar leaned forward with his elbows on his keyboard. “Is what she's saying that difficult?”

 

Jimmy let his guitar hang awkwardly from his shoulder. “Oh, yeah, of course _you'd_ say that.” He made a mocking kissy face and held his hands clasped against his cheek. “Come sing more at _me,_ Nny!”

 

Edgar was prepared to argue with him this time.  “Tenna _just said_ he wasn't doing it enough! I am literally repeating her.”

 

Tenna tapped her foot. “Guys, you can naked pillow fight all your feelings out later.  Are you going to do this or not?”

 

“We're doing it,” Johnny said, straightening his shoulders.

 

“The pillow fight?” Devi asked slyly.

 

Johnny stretched his arm behind him, toward Devi, and slowly extended his middle finger.

 

Devi cackled and played a 'ba-dum-tssh' to punctuate the situation.

 

He didn't want to cause any more blow ups, but Edgar thought perhaps he could help. “Nny, what if you had some kind of cue for when you should move around? Would that help?”

 

Jimmy immediately protested, flailing at Tenna. “You can't let him cue Nny for anything, he'll give himself more time!”

 

Johnny tightened his grip on the microphone.  “Jimmy, not everyone thinks like you.”

 

“Thank God,” Devi muttered.

 

Tenna whistled in a kid of awe. “If a benevolent God had anything to do with Jimmy, I will shit glitter.”

 

Edgar sat with that for several seconds, mulling it over. “I'm having trouble deciding entirely what you mean, and whether you'd like that or not.”

 

“It'd be fantastic, are you kidding me? I'm just saying it's unlikely, not that I wouldn't want to. Who _hasn't_ wanted to be a human glitter dispenser?”

 

Johnny made some very slow and nervous eye-contact with the others. “Who _indeed._ ”

 

Jimmy bit his lip and looked between Devi and Tenna.  “Would it still smell, do you think?”

 

Devi, remarkably, did not throw anything at him.

 

While talk of shit glitter continued between Tenna and Jimmy, Johnny nodded toward Edgar. “What kind of cue do you have in mind?”

 

“Little stuff, just – ” He nodded and leaned a little toward Jimmy.

 

Johnny nodded in return and tapped Edgar's keyboard along to the syllables as he said, “Gotcha.”

 

Edgar's favorite part of talking to Johnny, of _knowing_ him, was that they could do this. The way everything else had gone, Edgar figured that this ability to connect to each other with very few words probably meant they were using up their own lifespans or killing kittens every time it happened, but it was one of the most exciting things that Edgar ever did, no matter when he did it.

 

“Do the rest of us get to hear about this plan?” Devi asked, eyes narrow.

 

“It sounded straight forward to me,” Johnny called over his shoulder. “Someone start us in again.”

 

Edgar played the intro to the song they'd been attempting for most of the afternoon, and the others soon joined him. No matter how much they loved to talk or argue, they were easily led with a tune. Johnny sang through the first half of the opening verse focused on Tenna as she pretended to be a blob, and then he glanced over at Edgar. Edgar nodded to his right, in tune with the music and in a way that might have looked to a hypothetical blob audience as just enthusiastic playing. Johnny grinned and strolled over to Jimmy.

 

He sang with Jimmy the way he always did – with more intimate distance and vaguely suggestive charge than he'd ever allow outside this context. The impressive thing was that Johnny knew to try to hide checking for a cue from Edgar the same way Edgar hid giving it.  He wasn't just _looking_ , he was using his already theatrical motions and naturally extending them.

 

Signaling Johnny to get back to Devi was a bit more difficult, but Tenna the audience blob wouldn't notice a man whose hands were otherwise occupied tossing his head to get hair out of his face. To Edgar's surprise, Tenna neither stopped the song nor gave Edgar any Significant Looks, so he considered the motion a success.

 

It was going to be more difficult to cue Johnny away from Devi since she was slightly behind him and Johnny and Devi seemed to be enjoying themselves so much, but Edgar hoped that Tenna was onto something about Johnny and that he'd _want_ to come up and sing with Edgar eventually anyway.  Even if he was being inconsistent and weird about it lately, Edgar figured if he ever needed an excuse for doing something he was feeling uneasy about, disguising it as part of a performance would be the best way to get away with it.

 

Edgar made eye-contact with Johnny for only a fraction of a second, but it was enough.  Johnny slipped behind Edgar and slid around Edgar's keyboard to sing right in his face. At first, Edgar laughed, but it became more and more difficult to play with Johnny so _there_.  Thankfully, Johnny seemed to sense Edgar's pain and went back to singing at Tenna for the remainder of the song.

 

Tenna applauded when it was over. “That works better, you should do more of whatever that was.”

 

Johnny rolled his eyes. “Thank you for that extremely specific feedback.”

 

She held a finger up and twirled it at Edgar.  “Though if you're going to sing at people, you should do it from the side or something. It's weird to have your back to the audience, and you almost made Edgar laugh.”

 

“Noted,” Johnny said. He looked tired suddenly. This might have been what shutting off theatrical mode looked like.

 

“Hey, when do we get to name the band?” Jimmy asked.

 

“When we're worth naming,” Johnny told him.

 

“And when is that?”

 

“I don't know.” Johnny pulled at a bracelet made of plastic stars around his wrist. “Something will come to me.”

 

Devi set her drumsticks down. “I suppose _you_ get to name it?”

 

Without asking or even hesitating, Johnny walked over to Edgar and took a seat on the bench behind his keyboard.  “I'm sure as fuck not letting _Jimmy_ name it.”

 

“We don't get to vote on it or something?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny turned around to look at him. “It _would_ be you that suggests that.”

 

Edgar shrugged and smiled back at him. “Someone has to be the face of generic nice guy options. I've embraced it.”

 

Tenna pulled her chair in close to the others now that it looked like they were done for a while. “Edgar, you're so cute it makes me feel like being violently ill.”

 

Devi pulled a chair around for herself. “High praise indeed.”

 

After he'd untangled himself from his guitar, Jimmy secured his own chair, straddling it and propping his elbows up on the back of it. “So? _Will_ we get to vote?”

 

“Maybe.” Johnny shrugged and poked at some keys on Edgar's keyboard.

 

Jimmy smiled and flailed his arms a little in Johnny's direction. “Well, I've been thinking of some names, just in case. Do you wanna hear them?”

 

“No,” Devi answered.

 

“I wasn't talking to you, fuck off.”

 

“I was registering my _vote.”_

 

Johnny laughed, clearly pleased with himself, and stood up. “Come on, let's go find something to eat.”

 

The others blinked up at him, and then at each other.

 

What they were going to name a band of invisible teenagers did not come up again for the rest of the night.

 

Unfortunately, some other things did.

 

 

 

Luckily, they were alone when it happened, and Johnny did not have to suffer with anyone but Edgar watching.

 

It was a ridiculous thing, and it should have been funny.

 

In Edgar's basement, among all the things that were just for him and things that were just for Johnny were things that Johnny called Edgar's IKEA Catalog items: things that whoever was in charge had decided could fill the house if Edgar's personality hadn't been enough to do it.

 

So, that night, Edgar excitedly led Johnny into the basement to show him the newest IKEA items when he noticed Johnny looking a bit worn. “I want to show you what I found the other day when I came down for a new box of cereal.”

 

“You can't bring it upstairs?”

 

“It's big and awkward, and I don't even know if I know how it works,” Edgar confessed. “But I think one of the other guys might.”

 

“Oh?” The expression on Johnny's face was complicated.  He was normally interested in the things Edgar remembered, and it wasn't that he looked uninterested now, but he was hesitating.  Cautiously interested.

 

“It's okay,” Edgar reassured him. “It's something fun.”

 

“Okay.” Johnny tried to smile at him. It might have been just the limited basement light, but the area around his eyes looked much darker than his usual.

 

Once they'd descended the stairs, Edgar cleared boxes until he'd made a path to the stack of records he'd seen when retrieving a new box of Choco-Bats.

 

“Look! You have to see at how generic these are, it's hilarious.” He picked up several albums worth of classical and Christmas music and handed them to Johnny.

 

Johnny laughed lightly as he flipped through them. “You really do live in a catalog.”

 

“I think you do, too.”

 

Johnny stopped flipping through the records and his gazed flicked up to Edgar. His eyes were wide, ringed with some extra dark, and frightened. Before Edgar could apologize, Johnny shrugged it off and went back to flipping through the stack. “I guess so.”   He smiled and let out a soft puff of a laugh at one of the album covers. "Everything in here is the greatest hits of Nobody, this is great.  Great forces in the sky don't want to get sued, apparently."

 

“There's a player here, too. I'm hoping some other version of me remembers how to work it.”

 

“There are songs for a kid's birthday party in here,” Johnny said. “Did they think you'd be playing music for your own birthdays?”

 

“I used to find cake mix and a movie down here for my birthday,” Edgar said.  "So I'd eat cake batter and watch B-movies by myself every year."

 

“You should do something properly this time.”

 

“I think that's up to people not me.  Though you're welcome to have cake batter with me.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I'll find something.” He paused, flipped two records to the back of the stack in his hands, and then looked up.  "I want to have cake batter, though."

 

Maybe this was a good opportunity to say something.  The thought made him feel a little ill, but he was being baited by Tenna constantly, and was starting to believe there was reciprocation even without her opinion.

 

Johnny had other ideas though. “Hey, can you play this one?” He handed Edgar an album of classical tunes. “I want to see if generic albums from the supernatural are at least performed decently.”

 

“Sure, hang on.”

 

Edgar hovered over the player for several seconds before he had any idea how to even start, but the memories came to him.  It took a few tries to get it going properly, but soon the record popped and fizzed to life and the opening notes of a very impressive symphonic piece filled the basement.

 

Johnny grinned. “This actually doesn't sound horrible!”

 

“I'm surprised that there's anything on these! I figured they were just dummy props to decorate my house for photographs.”

 

Johnny laughed a little and turned the album cover over in his hands. “These should all have a choir in them too, that should be interesting.”

 

Edgar nearly jumped up at the idea. “Oh, hey, will we be able to understand them? Even if they're in Latin or something?”

 

“What do you think?” Johnny's smile was a perfect mix of thrilling and terrifying. If Johnny did one day find out about Edgar's feelings, and then refused them, Edgar didn't know how he was going to stop enjoying Johnny's smile.

 

The chorus began and Edgar was about to report that he never got tired of understanding archaic-sounding foreign languages when Johnny dropped the album cover and stepped backwards into a box of Christmas decorations.

 

“Whoa, are you okay?”

 

“No,” Johnny said quickly.

 

“Oh, no. Oh shit.”

 

Johnny braced himself against the stack of boxes marked 'tinsel' and 'ribbon' and wobbled on his feet.  He was breathing hard and didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. “The whole place blew up,” he said.

 

Edgar wanted to ask 'what place?' and hated that that was his first instinct. “It's okay,” he said instead. “You weren't there.”

 

“No, I _was_ , and I was covered in – there was so much of it!”

 

“It wasn't you,” Edgar said. “You haven't been anywhere that blew up.”

 

Johnny's chest and shoulders heaved and he slid down the boxes to the floor, curling himself against all the cardboard.  Edgar steered himself around the other Christmas boxes and dropped to his knees against the concrete floor.  He left enough space for Johnny not to feel crowded, but it was important for Edgar to be visible while these things happened.

 

“It was on the news,” Johnny said. “I was so angry, and I don't – I was the only one who got out, but I was _bleeding!_  There was blood on me!”

 

“Nny, stop, it wasn't you, you're right here. Can you tell me what place blew up? Or when? Why weren't the rest of us with you?”

 

Johnny pressed his hands hard over his heart, like trying to keep it from escaping. “You weren't there!”

 

“But we would have been if it had been you! So it wasn't you, it's okay.”

 

The chorus of 'Ode To Joy' grew to nearly deafening and then Johnny's eyes snapped open and he looked at Edgar, panting and shaking.

 

“It wasn't me.”

 

“No,” Edgar said softly. “It wasn't you. Whatever happened, it wasn't you.”

 

“Please turn it off.”

 

Edgar hauled himself to his feet and pulled the needle away from the record. The basement then filled with the strange sound of no sound at all and Edgar went back to Johnny.

 

“Are you okay? Do you want me to help you up?”

 

Johnny shook his head. “I--”

 

Edgar sat cross-legged on the floor next to him and listened to him trying to slow his breathing. He didn't know whether it would help, but Edgar concentrated on making his own breathing audible, slow, and regular, like providing a rhythm for Johnny to follow.  Before long, Johnny was miming Edgar's breathing, and the only sounds were the static of the record player and two people breathing in unison.

 

Johnny moved slowly and switched on the CD player in his pocket.  His breathing still matched Edgar's perfectly. The whirr of a new CD layered over the old static of the record player and Edgar heard nothing but the white noise of two generations of music.  Johnny's headphones hung around his neck, as always, and hearing something coming from them was usually not difficult. Tonight, however, whatever he was playing was soft, subdued, and difficult to hear when just _breathing_ was making so much noise.

 

With a deep breath, Johnny reached into the pocket with the CD player and handed Edgar a small pair of earbuds.

 

“Are these both connected?”

 

Johnny nodded, and so Edgar put the buds in his ears, and a man sang in soft whispered tones.

 

“ _Am I a good man?  
Am I a mad man?_

_It's such a fine line_

_between a good man and a...”_

 

And then came a stronger voice. Bigger, harder, louder, and more commanding.

 

“ _ **Do you really think**_ __ **  
that I would ever let you go?  
Do you think I'd ever set you free?  
If you do, I'm sad to say,  
It simply isn't so.  
You will never get away from me!” **

 

The softer, more panicked voice, called back.

 

“ _All that you are_ __  
is a face in the mirror!  
I close my eyes and you disappear!” 

 

Edgar's chest tightened a little in response to the line about the mirror. Once again, the stronger voice returned to contradict the first one.

 

“ _ **I'm what you face when you face in the mirror  
long as you live**_

_**I will still be here”** _

 

“ _All that you are is the end of a nightmare_  
all that you are is a dying scream  
after tonight I shall end this demon dream!”

 

_Uh-oh._

 

“ _ **This is not a dream my friend,**_

_**and it will never end** _

_**this one is the nightmare that goes on** _

_**Hyde is here to stay no matter what you may pretend** _

_**and he'll flourish long after you're gone”** _

 

_ Jekyll and Hyde?  _ Edgar pressed one of the buds further into his ear.  _ Were these two being sung by the same person? _

 

“ _Soon you will die and my mem'ry will hide you_

_you cannot chose but to lose control!”_

 

“ _ **You can't control me I live deep inside you**_

_**each day you'll feel me devour your soul”** _

 

 

Edgar bit his lip and looked at Johnny, who was wearing an expression Edgar had never seen on him before. Miserable? Wanting help? Hoping Edgar understood? Maybe some intriguing combination of all of them.

 

“ _I don't need you to survive like you need me_

_I'll become whole as you dance with death!  
And I'll rejoice as you breathe your final breath!”_

 

“ _ **I”ll live inside you forever!”**_

“ _NO!”_

“ _ **With Satan himself by my side!”**_

“ _NO!”_

“ _ **And I know that now and forever**_

_**they'll never be able to separate Jekyll from Hyde!”** _

 

“ _Can't you see it's over now?_

_It's time to die!”_

 

“ _ **No, not I**_

_**Only you!”** _

 

“ _If I die,_

_you die too!”_

 

“ _ **You'll die in me**_

_**I'll be you!”** _

 

“ _Damn you, Hyde!_

_Leave me be!”_

 

“ _ **Can't you see?**_

_**You are me!”** _

 

“ _No! Deep inside...”_

 

“ _ **I am – you are! You are Hyde!”**_

 

Edgar tugged the right earbud out and just sat with Johnny.  Their breathing had fallen out of sync, but Johnny's was normal again.

 

“Message received, I think,” Edgar said quietly. “What can I do?”

 

“I don't know.” Johnny sighed and looked at his hands resting in his lap. “I don't know why my head is so intent on attacking me while yours is content to just let you see doubles in the mirror.”

 

“The last version of you specifically asked not to remember things, so you'd think--”

 

Johnny curled his fingers into his palms and glared at Edgar. “Yeah, you know what you'd think? You know what you're sort of forced to conclude? The things you'd choose to forget are the things that are _horrible_.  The shit I said I wanted to forget was _horrible._ Thus, my _whole fucking life_ , minus you, a car, and some red-flavored shit from the 24-7 was _horrible._   Every other thing that will ever come back to me is going to be _horrible._ I just remembered flashes of some incident that left me with blood on my clothes and a building full of people exploding and I don't remember feeling anything about it except that I liked that fucking _Ode to Joy_ was playing.”

 

“Is that what triggered it?” It was an obvious question and Edgar felt ridiculous the second he asked it.

 

Johnny was perhaps too tired to be bothered that Edgar had made a ridiculous observation.  “Yeah, something about the chorus, and I could just see these flashes...”

 

“I'm sorry, I didn't know.”

 

“Yeah. I – I know you didn't. I didn't either. If I knew what to avoid, I would, but it's such random shit.”

 

“Life is random shit, I think.” Edgar folded the long cords for the ear buds in his hand. “If I find out what's keeping it from happening to me, you'll be the first to know.”

 

“I think _you_ are keeping it from happening to you.” Johnny pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his arms on them. “You have neat little packages in the mirror to put these things into. This memory is this guy, this one is that guy.  Mine are all getting funneled to the same place and competing for the same skull.  There's only one of me in the mirror, so these people are all stored inside one vessel and I have to try to figure out how to fight off part of my own head.”

 

Edgar wasn't sure it worked that way, but there was no reason to argue it.  What he wanted was to get them away from the basement and safely into the proximity of the pink recliner, which had yet to assault anyone with an unwanted memory.  “Do you want to go back upstairs and talk about this? It's kind of cold to be sitting down here.”

 

Johnny looked around like he thought he'd miss the scenery of stacked cardboard and then nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

 

Edgar smiled and got to his feet, but Johnny remained on the floor for several seconds.

 

“I--” He licked his lip and curled his fingers into the fabric of the shirt at his elbows. “I don't know if all that blood was mine.” He looked up at Edgar and blinked once. “I can't remember being in pain.”

 

“Can I help you up?”

 

Johnny took Edgar's hand without hesitation. “Yeah.”

 

He pulled Johnny up easily and tried to be reassuring.

 

“It'll be fine,” Edgar said as he ushered Johnny up the stairs.

 

Johnny said nothing in return, but Edgar chose to believe the slight incline of his head was a nod of agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, Tenna's song! 
> 
> The group's songs are being introduced gradually as things happen instead of, you know, all at once and sort of retroactively. I fucked up my original structure of the thing, so now that I've been working those songs in as things that are happening since the beginning, this will all make more sense. We'll hear/see more of Tenna's song (and the others', of course) as things progress. 
> 
> Tenna's song was written by a friend of mine, and is used for SWAN with her permission. You can see the full text of it here: http://sibilantesses.deviantart.com/art/She-s-Got-Technicolor-Shoes-86091990
> 
> I really wanted Tenna to get a chance to do something with Edgar, I wanted to explain how she learned to drive, I wanted to tell the story of getting the van, I wanted everyone to have their own time to song at Edgar, so this was just perfect. It's so nice to fill in these important stories now and to give Tenna some real presence in this thing, as opposed to the original. I love doing things with her. She's Edgar's favorite (other than Johnny) because she's mine too! I love her blinding enthusiasm but also her ability to drop things down into kindly Real Talk. There are not a lot of places Edgar can get that. 
> 
> This is also some beginning shreds of them as a band, which I hope you guys are excited about, because I'm pretty stoked about it. 
> 
> I was so excited about using this chapter's song this way (since it had been in a weird place in the original SWAN) that I very nearly punched myself in the face with joy. I wish I was exaggerating. I'm a little upset that I had not seen this connection of Johnny feeling this way before, but wow, I'm so glad I did. I love letting Johnny use songs to convey his feelings. It feels like him - it's indirect and strange and lets him avoid having to put anything out in concretely his own words. He can express himself and remove some level of responsibility for his own emotions at the same time. 
> 
> He's lucky Edgar is willing to be communicated at this way. 
> 
>  
> 
> The song, now that I've blabbed for ages, is:
> 
> Confrontation, from the musical Jekyll and Hyde. Particularly, the version sung by Anthony Warlow.


	12. Smile Like You Mean It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny is always performing, Edgar goes back to see Dib, the basement provides.

The faces in the mirror had changed.

 

Edgar couldn't pinpoint what was different, but every time he brushed his teeth, passed a shop window, or got in the van to help Tenna learn to recognize a stop sign, he'd see something different about the men who looked back at him.  It was as though something had flashed as he'd blinked and he'd caught only the tail end of it.

 

There were times when the others forgot about Edgar's three reflections and would jump when they passed a large store window or a long mirror in a public bathroom.  Johnny was as used to them as someone who wasn't Edgar could be and never reacted with alarm, though Edgar often caught him watching them with suspicious eyes.  He most often said that he thought he'd remembered something while looking at them.  Edgar couldn't help but wonder, then, why he bothered to look at all.

 

When the weather began to warm up, Devi showed up on Edgar's doorstep with a camera.

 

“Hi,” she said. “Can I borrow you this afternoon?”

 

Edgar leaned outside and looked around the porch and into the nearby bushes.

 

“Don't worry,” Devi told him. “My shadow isn't here today.  I'd like it if you and I could go without _yours_ too.”

 

Edgar laughed, a bit embarrassed.  It wasn't as though he hadn't made the same comparison between himself and Johnny and Devi and Tenna, but it was a bit different to hear it from Devi herself.

 

“I'll, uh, let him know.  Hang on.” Edgar took three steps back into the house and then turned around abruptly.  “What did I just agree to do?”

 

Devi grinned at him. “Don't worry, you won't be bleeding today.”

 

“That's good enough.”

 

He grabbed a light jacket from the closet near the door and returned to the living room where Johnny was playing one of the video games that had been Edgar's favorite when he lived here alone.  He'd been watching Johnny play, casually shouting 'advice' when he was about to make a decision to lead him to a 'bad' ending. 

 

“Hey, Devi wants to take me to do something.”

 

“Oh, okay, let me save it.”

 

“No, no, you're fine.  She just wants me.”

 

Johnny looked up at him from the floor. “Oh. You sure you can handle her?”

 

“She hasn't murdered me yet.  And I live with you, how much more difficult can she be?”

 

“Oh, I'm _difficult._   I'm _touched_.”  Johnny batted his eyes at Edgar and looked utterly ridiculous.  “That's the nicest thing you've ever indirectly said to me.”

 

“I'll be sure to be more direct next time.  I'll see you later, okay?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Have fun. Don't die.”

 

“Yeah, same to you.”

 

Edgar joined Devi on the porch and found her looking considerably more pleased than usual.

 

“Okay, I'm ready. What are we doing?”

 

“Well, I thought we'd try an experiment.”  She shrugged and adjusted a squareish black bag hanging on her shoulder.  “I've been thinking about you a lot lately.”

 

Edgar raised an eyebrow as Devi led the way off his porch. _This has never led to anything good on television, it's always love triangles or entering into cursed agreements._ “Um, _really?”_

 

“Yeah, you and those reflections of yours. I've taken photos of _you_ before, but never of them.”

 

“You want to take photos of my reflections?”

 

“Well, it's more like I want to see if I even _can._ Have you ever thought about whether they could be photographed?”

 

“It's been novel to just have _my_ photograph taken, I haven't thought about them too.”

 

“Well, with your permission, we're going to find out. You're not dressed appallingly today, so these should look nice.”

 

Edgar looked down at his clothes. “What's wrong with the way I dress?”

 

“Nothing. Today.”

 

She burst into laughter while Edgar frowned.

 

They walked together to the main street of town. Lately, most of the stores there were closing and nothing was filling them. Buildings were rotting away and lying empty in long rows down the entire strip of an already small town.  One of the storefronts that had left recently was a fine jewelry store that had covered its facade with large, polished, black stone tiles.  They had always been shiny enough to see yourself in.

 

Devi began unpacking her bag.  “We'll get some shots of you here, and we'll try some other places too, just in case the type of surface matters.”

 

“Why would that matter? A reflection should be on any sort of surface, shouldn't it?”

 

She held the camera in her hands and pursed her lips. “And nerdy dorks should only reflect once, but here we are.”

 

“I'm not nerdy, you're just being lazy and using it as shorthand for 'wears glasses'.”

 

“I wore glasses for a while, and I was not nerdy,” she said. “You still are. Now just stand there a second, look at the stone for me.”

 

Edgar looked over his shoulder and she immediately snapped a picture.

 

“Whoa, hey, I wasn't-”

 

“I know, I was just testing it,” she said. “Now just stand there and let me find an angle for this...”

 

She moved around him several times, and muttered that she might have to edit herself out of the final photo. He turned his head and looked right at her and she jumped.

 

“What?”

 

“I just got an idea, turn around and look right at the wall for me.”

 

“O...kay.” Edgar did as he was told and heard Devi sigh.

 

“But try to relax about it, come on.”

 

“Are these an experiment, or an art project?”

 

“Why can't they be both?”

 

He turned his head to look back at her and her camera whizzed and clicked several more times. He'd gone from knowing that there were enough photos of him to count on one hand to being alarmed that there were now going to be so many.

 

When the clicking and whirring ceased, Edgar heard Devi's camera beep a few times.  “Okay,” she said, “come here, take a look at these.”

 

He got up close beside her and peered down into the tiny digital screen.  She zoomed into the the stone in the image, and there, faintly, were Edgar's other faces.

 

“Ohmygod, they're really there.” Edgar found the words coming out of him before he hand a chance to think about them.  It wasn't that he ever doubted that he had three reflections, but just seeing them captured in something made them seem tangible.

 

“They seem to be.”

 

Edgar looked up at them, and that kind of subtle difference winked at him again.

 

“Could we maybe get some clearer photos of them?” Edgar asked. “In front of an actual mirror, I mean? I've been having a weird feeling about them lately and I'd like to get an image of them that isn't going to change.”

 

Devi gave him a sideways glance. “You've only been feeling weird about them _lately_?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “When you've had them since you can remember, it's not that strange.  I'd feel weird without them, I think.”

 

“I just keep thinking they're weird dead versions of you, and that you seem to have a habit of dying young.”

 

It hadn't ever occurred to Edgar to worry about the ages of the men in the mirror, because he was always so much younger. When he was ten, men in their twenties seemed far away, and like generic unfathomable adults.  Now, he was going to be seventeen in a few weeks and men in their twenties seemed more frighteningly close.

 

“Well, I will think about that now every time I brush my teeth, thanks.”

 

“You'll be okay. You have more of us now.”

 

Edgar raised an eyebrow. “Us?”

 

“You only had Nny before, right?  Keeping you alive and shit.”

 

Edgar thought back, and the memories of both men he'd been featured nothing but mundane details, and Johnny.  The second one had had a better experience with Johnny, though what had happened to the first one, he was still unsure.

 

“Yeah, just the two of us, with me trying to help him with something.”  He shrugged.  “And then I guess I didn't help, and here we are.”

 

Devi narrowed her eyes at him.

 

“Come on, let's go find a mirror to take some more pictures for you.”  She snapped the lens cap back on the camera.

 

They strolled through what passed as 'down town' in this tiny place, and found several surfaces to take photos against. The water in the fountain in the tiny emporium, a comic book store display window where Edgar's dead faces looked out from the sun-faded images of super heroes, and then, finally, a mirrored column in a small general store.

 

Edgar grew more at ease with every photo and Devi's expression when he looked at each one was strange and kind of touching.  She looked so fond.  And while he was sure she was just pleased with the composition or the lighting, it was nice to think for a little while that someone was happy to see him.

 

She laughed looking at one of the photos, and that was when Edgar first heard a tiny snippet of the real Devi.

 

“For such a normal looking / _it's all a work in progress, dear/_ weird emotional portraits.”

 

Edgar nearly jumped to the ceiling.  He was worried it would only be Tenna, or that she and Johnny had been playing an elaborate game with him.  But there was no way Devi would agree to such a thing, especially when away from both of them, right?

 

“I'm sorry, what?” He knew he sounded excited, but couldn't bother to contain it.

 

She looked alarmed.  “I said 'For such a normal-looking dude, you definitely take some weirdly emotional portraits.'”

 

“I heard something about a 'work in progress' instead.”

 

He didn't know how she reacted at first.  She was just blinking, staring at him, and there were equal parts disbelief, anger, and celebration.

 

Finally, she smiled, but barely.  “You can hear that?”

 

“Yeah, just now, just a flash of it.”  He tried to hold in his smile and utterly failed.

 

“Let me tell you something, Edgar.”  She tucked her camera into her bag.  “I never expected you to hear it.”

 

His excitement deflated somewhat. “Oh.”

 

“Tenna told me you'd heard hers, and I thought, 'Yeah, he'll hear Jimmy next, because Jimmy is so easy, but I'll never be that close to Edgar.'”

 

“Is that what it is? Being close?” He had to wonder, then, why he'd never heard anything from Johnny.  All the times they'd laughed and sang and worked in perfect unison on a ridiculous idea, and Edgar had not heard so much as a note.

 

“We don't know everything,” Devi said quickly. “We don't even completely know what makes them appear, but if I had to guess? I'd say it's something like completely accepting yourself or something appropriately feel-good movie-y. You're into that shit, right?”

 

“I guess so?”

 

“Good.  You look like a feel-good movie type.”

 

He smiled.  It seemed the appropriate response.  She slung her bag over her shoulder and motioned toward the door of the store.  “Are you ready to go?”

 

“Oh, sure.” He pulled his jacket close around him as they left, the cooler outside air looping around their ankles.

 

He had a feeling he shouldn't ask, but Tenna had already been evasive and he certainly couldn't show up at Jimmy's asking...

 

“Can you tell me what Nny's song sounds like?”

 

“No.”

 

“Do you not--?”

 

“And you shouldn't ask him about it, either.”

 

“Is this like the thing where you think I shouldn't like him?”

 

She stopped walking.  “No, this is something you should actually listen to. Do _not_ ask him about this, he will _not_ be happy with you.”

 

Johnny had snapped at Tenna when she made a joke in the van about songs.  Edgar couldn't remember what she'd said, only that Johnny reacted more strongly than Edgar thought really necessary, even for Johnny.

 

Edgar nodded. “Okay.”

 

“I mean it.  I will not be responsible for how he behaves if you fuck this up.”

 

_“ _And the idiots surround her__  
__And she tells them all to go to hell_ _  
__Because they’re in her space now_ _  
__And they can’t even fucking know.”_ _

 

_“I wouldn't ask you to be responsible for him regardless.  It's fine.  I won't say anything.”_

 

_She softened a little and sighed a very 'hopeless situation' sigh.  “You seem like good people, Edgar.  We don't want you getting hurt.”_

 

_This seemed a weird theme among this group, to cut him and laugh at him and lead him into dark spaces, but declare passionately that they did not want him coming to any harm._

 

 

 _“ _Cry ‘blasphemy’, cry ‘fuck you’__  
__But don’t bother to change_ _  
__Because it’s all a work in progress, dear_ _ _  
_ __And we’re all bound to be a little strange.”_ _

 

_It was possible Devi and the others had a different idea of harm than Edgar did._

 

 

 

Later, Devi printed and edited the best of her collection of photos of Edgar, as well as the one of just his reflections for his own personal study. The set of Edgar inspired her to do a series featuring solo shots of the others and they spent an afternoon later that week setting up shots in various locations around the school. She took a few 'posed' photos, but the ones Devi really liked were in between poses, when people weren't looking, or weren't even aware they were being shot.  Jimmy's best shot was him talking to Tenna, who was standing just off camera.  Tenna's was actually before her shoot even started, as she played with her skeleton toys and tried to spin in circles in her legwarmers and sneakers.  Johnny's were all good, but he had a sort of knack for posing while doing nothing.  Still, the one Edgar liked best of him was him laughing at something Devi had said about him, glancing to the side between posed shots, with his head slightly tilted back.

 

Devi modified all the photos digitally after the shoot so that a particular feature of each of them stood out in brighter color – Edgar's eyes and those of his extra reflections, Johnny's partly blue-dyed hair and a large collection of tangled jewelry around his neck and wrists, an ugly but colorful healing bruise under a shirt decorated with band patches on Jimmy, and Tenna's bright legwarmers because her skeleton toys couldn't be _bright_ black and white.  Devi also took one of herself, featuring her eyes and paint splatter on her skin from her last art project.

 

It was exciting to be part of the group enough that Devi took photos of Edgar on purpose, rather than just because he was conveniently in proximity to the people she actually cared about snapping photos of.  Sure, it was originally just curiosity about his supernatural faces, but she even asked him to help her develop some prints of the non-digital images in the school's shoddy dark room.  When Devi was away from things that frustrated her – mostly Jimmy – Edgar found her to be a lot more pleasant. If he did everything she said, then she stayed happy and he enjoyed her company as much as he enjoyed Tenna's, though it was a different kind of enjoyment.

 

“I haven't told Nny about it,” she told Edgar while she was showing him the final prints, “but I'm going to hang copies of these up around the school, maybe even around town.”

 

“To see if we're invisible even in photos?”

 

She shrugged one shoulder.  “Pretty much. I just want to watch and see if anyone reacts to them.  I know Nny hopes we'll become visible from doing all this singing and playing, and I'm willing to play along, but I think it's mostly just some weird bullshit tactic to help him.”

 

Edgar looked up from the photos.  “It might be a little of both.”

 

Devi tucked a pencil behind her ear and put one hand on her hip.  “What is it helping him _with_ , Edgar?”

 

She'd already guessed something was up, so it didn't seem worth it to tell her it was nothing. There was so much Devi didn't know that it was almost a relief that she _knew_ she didn't know something. “He doesn't want me to say.”

 

“Oh, of _course_ he doesn't.  Emperor Asshole mustn't reveal his little _mysteries_ to the common folk.”  She wiggled her fingers in the air to stress 'mysteries' and looked thoroughly disgusted.

 

“I'll talk to him about it.”  Edgar flipped to the image of Johnny laughing in the stack of photos in his hands.  It now seemed especially relevant that Devi had enhanced the color of the red cord keeping the key tied to his neck.  “I've been meaning to tell him that it's going a little too far anyway.”

 

 

 

Johnny had been upstairs in the choir room with Jimmy and Tenna when Edgar and Devi went to take care of photos, and when Edgar left Devi to finish her business with her prints, he assumed he'd return to the others and join whatever sort of singing party they were having.  As he was about to turn the corner to go into the choir room, however, he considered that it'd been a long time since they'd heard anything from Dib.  Johnny had collected an apparently hack-able credit card from him, but they'd heard nothing about the Pepito video, and it had been months.

 

He turned away from the choir room and the dance party it sounded like they were having in there, and instead ducked into the band room. It was too late in the afternoon for there to be any classes now, so it was empty of proper visible students.  That made it better anyway.  It was difficult and annoying to navigate around people who didn't know you were there.  Edgar walked to the wall of filing cabinets and knocked on a few of them.

 

“Hey, Dib, are you here? It's Edgar.”

 

Immediately, there was the sound of something crashing to the ground, and then the drawer that had opened the last time shot open.  Edgar looked inside, Dib's digital face looked back at him, and somewhere in the row of cabinets, a lock disengaged.

 

Dib popped out from behind the one with the false front.  “There you are,” he said.  “I wondered if you'd ever be back.”

 

“Yeah, I've … been busy.”

 

“You mean 'distracted',” Dib corrected.

 

“If you've been watching me enough to know I've been _distracted,_ you could have tracked us down.”

 

Dib flailed his arm. “Come on, come on, get in here.  It doesn't matter, you're here now.”

 

Edgar slipped into the cabinet.  It was slightly smaller than he remembered.

 

Dib's computer collection had only grown since Edgar was here last.  There were so many new things, things Edgar had seen advertised only recently as top of the line, that Edgar no longer felt bad using Dib's money for Tenna's driving adventures.  He took a seat next to Dib as Dib called up several programs on both a desktop computer and a little hand-held tablet.

 

“Here, you take this,” Dib said, thrusting the tablet into Edgar's hands.  “I've synced these, so follow along.”

 

“Why can't I just look at your screen while you--?”

 

“Shh, look at the tablet.”

 

Edgar sighed and watched the tablet's screen. The video taken of Edgar and Johnny all those months ago on Pepito's porch popped up.

 

“Here's the video we got that day,” Dib explained.

 

“Yeah, I remember.”

 

“And here-” There was some furious clicking and typing before Dib continued. “- are some still frames taken from the video that have been enhanced. Your friend Johnny mentioned that this guy had horns at the end of your encounter, and we – that is, the Eyeball Network – theorized that this may be his _actual form_ , and what you saw when he first answered the door was a disguise.”

 

Edgar scrunched up his face, skeptical.  “An obsession with aliens and investment in the reality of the supernatural aside, though, why assume it wasn't a regular guy wearing fake horns?”  It wasn't that Edgar hadn't been there and experienced them just appearing, it wasn't that he hadn't believed it at the time, but he'd seen 'Secrets of Magic: Revealed' on television often enough to know that staging most anything was possible, especially if your audience was already unsettled, confused, or alarmed.

 

Dib held up one finger. “Ah, but that's _just_ the sort of question an intelligent student of the supernatural will ask.  It's not only our job to look for the real, and the true, but to disprove the hoaxes that threaten the very validity of our work.  You should join the Network.  I could lead you through the initiation processes if you want.”

 

“I'll... think about it,” Edgar lied.  “Show me what you've found about Pepito first?”

 

“I'm getting there.”

 

He brought up a few more images, this time some maps and pictures of local streets.  “The reason we suspect the lack of horns are the disguise is in these images. Watch this.”

 

A slide show of still images of Pepito's street began.  His house looked the same as ever through some changing seasons and angles, and then abruptly vanished to be nothing more than an empty lot.

 

Edgar jumped a little and opened his mouth to ask what had happened, but Dib held up his hand. “Shh, shh, shh. Just wait.”

 

The images of nothing continued and then suddenly, the house reappeared as though it had never left. There were no images of construction or demolition. Just there, gone, and back again.

 

“What am I looking at?” Edgar asked.

 

“Time lapsed photography of the area with as full a picture as we've able to stick together. There are a few days missing here and there, but none of the gaps in our data are long enough to build or demolish a house in. Here are three photos to compare. The first from before it vanished, the second is the empty lot the first day it was seen, and the next is the first day the house returned. Notice anything?”

 

“It's full of grass, it's...” The empty lot was _exceptionally_ empty, and actually appeared overgrown.  It was not at all like there had been a full house on it two days before. “Was this really just the next day?”

 

“Check the date stamps if you want.”

 

They were, in fact, a day apart.

 

"No chance someone has been tampering with the dates?"

 

Dib leaned back, pleased.  "Thanks to the system we have set up, none. But well done, asking that question."

 

"Thanks."  Dib praising him was different than Johnny or even Devi doing it.  It made him slightly uncomfortable, but like so many parts of his life lately, he couldn't pin down why.

 

The photos of the house were subtly different too, much in the way Edgar's reflections had been lately.  He couldn't pin it down precisely, but something was off.

 

“Where's Johnny, incidentally?” Dib asked, as he pulled up more and more programs on his screen.  “I've never seen you two apart.”

 

“Oh, next door, doing something loud with our other friends.”

 

“Strange that it's just you here.  I thought he'd be interested in this.”

 

“He is, he's just busy.”

 

Dib shrugged. “Well, he's missing the most exciting stuff.”  An aerial view of the area around the school appeared on Edgar's screen.  “This,” Dib said, circling his cursor around the largest building in the image, “is the school.  Here is the house in question.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Watch now.”

 

Again, seasons changed all around the house and it stayed unchanged among moving cars and other flickering differences until it vanished completely.

 

“Here's the fun part,” Dib whispered excitedly.  “It doesn't come back.”

 

Edgar blinked. “What?”

 

“I don't think there's really a house there.”

 

“But we just saw it come back in the other slide show.  And I was – we were in there!”

 

“Yes, but look at these.”

 

Dib called up several websites full of generic real estate information and a few newspaper listings.

 

“Here's the address of that house – see the house number in this screenshot. The matching address on the For Sale forums for the real estate listing is...”

 

He highlighted the section of the site on Edgar's tablet.

 

“An empty lot,” Edgar finished. _“We're_ the only ones who can see the replacement house?”

 

“Fascinating, isn't it? It's almost like you have to be _open_ to the possibility of these things existing for you to really _see_ them.”

 

“So you think he's really a guy with horns because he replaced a real house with a version of it that only we can see?”

 

“I haven't found the common link between all the people who can see it,” Dib said. “We're still conducting surveys, but it could be anything from blood types, to certain experiences, to having alien DNA!  And we have no way to know if we have everyone.  There are some people who walk by there everyday, see a house, and don't think anything of it.  It doesn't appear there are very many of us, but the variables alone... I mean, even the photos are confusing.  How could a camera sense the particular supernatural vision of the person who took the photo?  What sort of technology is behind this?”

 

Edgar immediately thought of Devi's art project. “Have you showed this to anyone who can't see the house in real life?  Can they see the photos of the fake house?”

 

Dib's eyes went wide and he bit his lip in excitement. “Yes!”

 

“So people will be able to see us...”

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing, just... my friend took some photos of us, and – How many people can see you?”

 

Dib adjusted his glasses. “What kind of question is that?”

 

“My friends and I, we have a kind of visibility problem. There are five of us, and we're the only ones who can see each other, other than you.”

 

“Only five of you? I thought for sure I counted six and you guys just didn't like that other girl.”

 

“Other girl? What other girl?”

 

“I'll look into her later,” Dib said dismissively. “What I think is interesting is why this Pepito guy would choose to remove a real house and then replace it with a fake one that _would_ convince everyone who looked at it, but is only visible to a small fraction of people.  He's wasting all this effort on something that he's only showing to a select population.  I want to know what happens if we spread the knowledge that he's there far enough.  What is he trying to keep hidden from everyone but this tiny group of us?”

 

“Maybe I can convince Johnny to go with me and ask him.”

 

“Perfect! That's just what I wanted to hear.  Just a second!”

 

Dib whirled away on his office chair to a cabinet he had in the back and pulled out a tiny bundle of circuits.  He slid back to Edgar's side with them pinched between two fingers.

 

“This is remote camera.  Wear this, then I can record the conversation that goes on and get more data on this guy.”

 

Edgar took the tiny cluster.  It was smaller than a fingernail, with a tiny lens and a small hook on the back.  “Why would this work? You could barely get footage from the yard last time, and Pepito's house was enough to warp Johnny's CD player.”

 

Dib leaned back in his chair and dusted nothing from the lapels of his long coat.  “Well, I've recently been entrusted with a bit of tech from a civilization far beyond our own, and, I'm hoping, far beyond this Pepito guy's too.  This camera is derived from that technology, and this seems the best way to test it out.”

 

Edgar bit his lip as he inspected the tiny lens.  “I... don't think Johnny will agree to this.”

 

“Then _you_ wear it.  We'll loop it on a necklace or something, he'll never know it isn't decorative.  You're the only ones who have been inside, so he might allow you a second entry.  You are the only ones who can do this, Edgar.  Now, I do have a list of recommended questions here from the--”

 

“I mean I don't think Johnny will want to be recorded,” Edgar said.  “Regardless of who's wearing the camera.”

 

Dib's enthusiasm wavered somewhat and he raised his eyebrows in annoyance.  “I had a feeling you two were up to something.”

 

“It would be surprising that you wouldn't think that if you've been watching us.”

 

Dib frowned. “It's not that I've been watching you _extensively,”_ he defended. “And it's actually _this_ that made me think so.”

 

He brought up a screen shot of Todd talking to Edgar and Johnny on Pepito's porch – the bit of the encounter that neither of them remembered.

 

“You know something about Todd?” Edgar asked.

 

“Only what he was telling you.”

 

Edgar nearly flung himself across the keyboard, and felt momentarily guilty that he hadn't brought Johnny with him to find all this out. “Shit, what was it?”

 

“Here's the file, thanks to some people on the Eyeball.  They've been asking about you guys since deciphering this.  I'll finally be able to tell them something.  They'd also be really interested in a question and answer session with you if I could set that up.”

 

Edgar looked at Dib, his heart racing.  “Can they see us on the footage?”

 

Dib grinned. “Yes.  Will you talk to forum?”

 

“Fine, yes.”

 

“Perfect!” Dib reached over and poked Edgar's screen and the image came to life with subtitles.

 

“I'm sorry,” Todd mouthed as he shut the door behind him. “I just want to talk to you.”

 

Since Johnny's back was partly to the camera, Dib's Eyeball people were not able to decipher his half of the conversation, or even any part Edgar may have played.

 

“We used to know each other,” Todd said, motioning between himself and Johnny. “Do you remember me?”

 

Johnny's head moved in the video, but whether he said something or just squinted in Todd's direction was impossible to say.

 

Todd nodded. “We were neighbors. You were--,” and here Todd mumbled, “--good person--,” and turned his head, “– but what he wants to do to you isn't fair. You've got to get rid of this.”

 

Todd motioned toward the key on Johnny's neck and Edgar slowly put his hand over his mouth.  “Oh, no.”

 

Back in the video, Johnny of course gestured wildly in response.  Edgar watched himself hold Johnny back a little.  Todd only got to say, “Please, you're both going to get hurt.  Just listen!” before Pepito emerged.

 

“You're just being lazy!” Todd cried as Pepito put a stop to the conversation with just a glance and a gesture.

 

The video was subtitled with Pepito saying, “You're lovely. Go back in. I need to take care of this.” After that, it cut off, as Pepito stepped between Edgar and Johnny and the camera's view.

 

“Oh, no,” Edgar said again. “We have to get that thing off of him, he--” He looked up at Dib and realized he'd already said too much.

 

“So there _is_ something.  Any moron could tell this wasn't about collecting keys and having a tea party.”

 

“He _did_ feed us cookies, though,” Edgar said weakly.  He smashed his face into one hand, mind spinning, panicking about how they'd ever remove that key.

 

Dib crossed his arms and leaned back dramatically in his chair. “That isn't even remotely my point.”

 

“I know, I know, I just – He doesn't want to talk about certain things to other people.”

 

“You just said there were _five_ of you.”

 

“People other than me.”

 

Dib nodded, but his wide eyes meant he didn't really understand.  “Take the camera with you. Ask Johnny to go into the house again with you.  This could be important.  Saving the human race kind of important.”

 

“I know. I know.” He pocketed the camera and hoped he wouldn't accidentally wash it with his jeans before he could decide what to do with it. “I... I should go find him. Unless you have something else?”

 

“That's it for now, though there's never been anything that couldn't do with exhaustive study. Come back again, schedule a session with my forum, and I'll update you.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Humanity will thank us later,” Dib said serenely.  “Get going.  Bring that back to me as soon as you record something.”

 

Edgar nodded as he stepped out. “I will, I will.”

 

Dib shook his head and closed the cabinet behind Edgar.

 

The last time Edgar left Dib, he and Johnny were standing in the hall, fresh from being really in sync with each other, and Johnny was impressed with him.  Now he had a tiny camera in his pocket, and he could use it to get information analyzed, but at the cost of betraying Johnny's trust in Edgar's secret keeping.

 

Edgar couldn't decide if asking Johnny about it, getting a firm no, and then using it anyway would be better or worse than using it without a word.

 

Either way, he needed to talk to Johnny.  It felt urgent, even though Todd's warning had been nine or ten months ago. Perhaps Todd didn't know that Johnny's key was already stuck to his neck? Maybe that's all he was warning about, and this would all be nothing.

 

Johnny lit up when Edgar entered the choir room, even though he was mid-song with Tenna and Jimmy. He motioned for Edgar to join them, but Edgar refused and sat on the desk outside the office window.  It may have been the first time someone did not come when Johnny called.  When the song ended, he motioned for Jimmy and Tenna to wait for him and trotted over to see Edgar.

 

“What's wrong?”

 

“I just visited Dib.”

 

Johnny instantly lost what sympathy he had in his expression. “Why?”

 

Edgar nodded toward Jimmy and Tenna over Johnny's shoulder. “We should talk about this somewhere else.”

 

Johnny looked back and regarded Jimmy singing along to Tenna's kazoo. “Okay, come on.”

 

“Hey!” Jimmy called. “What are you doing?”

 

Johnny waved him off. “Just a minute, I'll be back.”

 

He led Edgar out into the hall, and hesitated in front of the door to the girls' restroom, where the group usually held private conversations.

 

“This might be better on the roof,” he said suddenly.

 

Edgar nodded.

 

 

 

The wind was still there. Every time they'd visited, the air on the roof moved differently than the air anywhere else. Edgar found it comforting and creepy in equal measure.

 

Johnny closed and locked the door behind them.  He took a breath with seemingly every part of his body, tilting his head back enough that he looked as though he wanted to breathe the sky.  He looked back to Edgar.  “Okay, go.”

 

As Edgar relayed the invisible house information and Todd's warning, Johnny looked increasingly sick.  He wound his fingers around the key, slowly twisting until the cord tightened around his throat and his finger tips turned red.

 

“I _can't_ get rid of it," Johnny said, his eyes blank.

 

“I know, but I wanted you to know about it.”

 

“Why did you even have to go see him?”

 

“Nny, you've been ignoring _everything_ , I just wanted to know more of what was happening! This stuff should be important! We could be in some actual danger!”

 

“I'm ignoring everything because everything _eats my head!”_ Johnny's hands were balled into fists.

 

“I'm sorry, I just – Look, I wanted to help, and I thought he might have learned something that could make this better for you.  I didn't mean to find out the opposite, but I still think it's important, I still think we can use it.”

 

Johnny wasn't listening.

 

“If the house isn't real, where _were_ we? Were we sitting on a couch in a field? Video games in an empty lot? Did we hallucinate?" He placed his hand around his throat and grimaced. "What did we _eat_?”

 

“Nny, it's okay. Breathe.”  Why Edgar didn't see this coming, he did not know, and Johnny kept going, panicking.

 

“I _did_ know Todd, I did.  He was little, he was just a kid and his parents were garbage and I – I was trying to help, but I was _really bad_ at it.  I don't know, I – broke a window?  There was more blood, but it was mine that time.”

 

He looked up at Edgar, eyes wide. “Why do I keep remembering blood?”

 

“Nny, I don't --”

 

“Do _you_ remember blood?”

 

“No, but that doesn't mean--” _What? That he won't later? That there wasn't any? God, what was he saying? As though anything Edgar could say in response would help._

 

Johnny shook a little as he stood near the edge, watching Pepito's fake house.

 

“I don't want to talk to them again.”

 

“I know, but how else are you going to learn anything?”

 

“Maybe I don't want to learn anything!” Johnny snapped. “Maybe I just want to sing and be visible and not worry about it!”

 

Even as Johnny was shrieking that he didn't want to be bothered with it, he was still clutching an unbreakable cord that kept a possessed key tied to his neck.

 

“And you're just going to have that tied to your neck for the rest of your life?  Knowing that across the street are two people who know what it is and why it's stuck there?” Edgar took a breath, trying to keep his voice quiet.  Screaming back at Johnny had rarely produced the results he wanted, in this life or the last.

 

“I saved Todd once.  There was some piece of shit trying to take him from the mall...” He squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with one hand.  He sniffed a few times, and then said shakily, “I know what it smells like, what it sounds like, but I've never been to a mall.”

 

“Because you're not that other guy.”

 

“I'm not even a 'guy' at all, so you saying that I'm--” He stopped that train of thought abruptly, adding it to the large number of times now that he'd made references like this and then cut them short. “There was blood there too.  God, there is blood on _everything_ I remember.”  He pulled his hand away from his face, and looked at his palm.  He unwound the other from his necklace and did the same, looking at his hands with a kind of panicked horror.  “I remember how it feels, how it kind of sticks when there's so much and how it--” He rubbed his palms aggressively on his sleeves, apparently trying to wipe off a memory.

 

“Hey, you used to cut your hands for the choir room, remember? This could be a real memory and you're just associating.” Again, he was quiet, pleasant.

 

“But there's no _pain_ in my memories,” Johnny whined. “It's not the same, it's not.” He shook his head and held his hands out in front of him, beside him, up in the air, trying to find something to do with them.

 

“Can you focus on the memory with the pain? The real one?”

 

“I can't focus on anything.” He looked into the sky beseechingly, but it was still early evening, and there were not yet any stars for Johnny to find himself in. Edgar thought he might see Johnny cry, and wasn't prepared for the possibility.

 

“Here, listen.” Edgar stepped closer and leaned around Johnny to try to catch his eye.  “Focus on me.”

 

“My hands are disgusting, it's all over them...”

 

“No, they're not, they're clean. There's nothing there.”

 

Johnny flexed his fingers and shuddered. “I can feel it there.”

 

“Can I see?”

 

“ _Can_ you?” He thrust his hands at Edgar's chest. “Look at them!”

 

Edgar brought his own hands up to sit next to Johnny's, palms up.  “I'm looking. They look like mine. Clean.”

 

Johnny blinked between his hands and Edgar's. He turned his left hand over and hovered it over Edgar's right for several seconds and then pressed their palms together. Edgar tried not to react too strongly, but Johnny beat him to it and pulled away like he'd been burned.

 

“I need to get some gloves,” Johnny said, his voice shaking.

 

“We'll find you some.  Maybe Tenna can make them.”

 

Johnny shook his head.  “They'll be in your basement, just like everything else.”

 

“Do you want to go home and get them?”

 

Johnny stayed quiet for several seconds, and Edgar wondered if he'd been heard at all.  Pepito's fake house still sat below, and now there were tiny hints of light inside one of the upstairs windows.

 

_How is there even an upstairs to an empty field?_

 

“Yes,” Johnny said, finally.

 

“Okay, I'll walk with you.”

 

Edgar opened all the doors and guided Johnny through the halls that Johnny had originally introduced to Edgar.  Johnny walked like he'd never been there before, spending most of the trip trying to shake nothing from his hands.  They had to stop by the choir room before they could leave, no matter how much Johnny obviously needed to. Edgar thought to volunteer himself to go in and explain them away, but Johnny stopped him, and strolled in still, confident, and lively. As though nothing was wrong.

 

Tenna and Jimmy lit up at the sight of him.   "Hey!" Tenna shouted.  "We thought maybe you'd got stuck in the toilet."

 

“Hey, sorry about that.  Edgar reminded me that I haven't eaten all day, so I'm going to head home for the night.  I'll see you guys tomorrow.”

 

Tenna pouted. “Aww, you don't want to do the last song with us?”

 

“He just wants to go home with Edgar,” Jimmy grumbled.

 

Johnny smiled, and even though Edgar had only seconds ago seen him struggling to deal with even having hands, Edgar believed the smile.

 

_How often is Johnny just performing?_

 

“Okay, but just one. Then I seriously need to go eat something.”

 

“Then it's going to be a good one,” Jimmy said. “Hang on.”

 

Jimmy slipped into the office to change the stereo, and Tenna raised her eyebrows at Edgar.  He tried to look casual, but her stare only intensified.

 

Johnny's 'I have it all together' demeanor faltered a little with Jimmy out of the room, and his smile became a little less believable. If Tenna noticed or thought it odd that Johnny couldn't stop running his fingers over his palms, she showed no signs of it.

 

“What is he putting on?” Johnny asked.

 

Tenna shrugged.  “Something in German, I bet.  It's kind of his favorite.  He told me today he wants to learn to do it for real, instead of just singing it.”

 

“Good for him,” Edgar said. “Maybe if we're ever visible, he'll find someone to practice with.”

 

Johnny crossed his arms, conveniently burying his hands in his elbows. “If it's something that means I have to fuck up my throat again, I'm not singing.  I don't know why he thinks I sound like an operatic viking with gravel in my throat.”

 

“He doesn't,” Tenna said, “he just thinks of you on that same plane of cool.”

 

Johnny flexed his fingers and dug them into his arms.  “So his idea of what is cool is so strong that it overwrites the reality?”

 

“I guess. Kinda like, ' _I think operatic vikings are sexy, I think Nny is sexy, therefore Nny is an operatic viking_.'”

 

“You could not call me that again and I'd be extremely grateful,” Johnny said.

 

She ducked her head. “Sorry.  It _is_ probably how he thinks though.”

 

Jimmy returned from the office and circled around Johnny with a massive grin on his face.  Johnny seemed to kind of inflate, putting so much effort into looking totally normal apparently just for Jimmy's sake.  It was weirdly sweet.  If Jimmy had any idea how much effort Johnny regularly put in to not cause Jimmy undue anxiety...

 

That was probably why Johnny never mentioned it.

 

When the song started, Edgar thought Johnny would lose his grip on the 'just fine' act as he looked back at Edgar with a sort of pained laughing expression.  He didn't say anything, but 'It fucking figures,' was nearly visible in his eyes.  Edgar winced when he recognized the song and anticipated the chorus.  

 

_Painfully appropriate._

 

Despite that his head was convincing him that he had blood on his hands, Johnny sang the song as though he had not a care in the world.

 

“ _Save some face, you know you've only got one_ __  
_Change your ways while you're young_ __  
_Boy, one day you'll be a man_ __  
_Oh girl, he'll help you understand_ __  
  
_Smile like you mean it_ _  
__Smile like you mean it”_

 

Jimmy and Tenna joined him, though Tenna's contribution was a kazoo rather than her voice.

 

Johnny infused so much life into moving along with the song, there was no way the others would have noticed anything wrong with him.  He mimed a bit at Tenna, who blew her kazoo back at him in a way that could only be called affectionate.  Unless Tenna was just as good at performing and faking as Johnny, she really did enjoy his company.  Jimmy bowed to him, and Johnny even offered his hand, though he pulled it away before Jimmy could do more than brush his fingertips.  Surprisingly, Jimmy didn't raise a fuss about it and just kept right on enjoying himself.

 

Tenna laughed into her kazoo, and Edgar decided to join in singing, though he sat away from the prancing.

 

“ _And someone is calling my name_  
From the back of the restaurant  
And someone is playing a game  
In the house that I grew up in  
And someone will drive her around  
Down the same streets that I did  
On the same streets that I did”

 

Johnny shot Edgar a grateful glance when he heard his voice, reached out, grabbed Edgar's hands, and pulled him to his feet to join the others.

 

“You have to stop doing that,” Johnny said between lyrics. “Do things _with_ us.”

 

"I didn't--"

 

“ _Smile like you mean it_  
Smile like you mean it  
Smile like you mean it  
Smile like you mean it”

 

 

Johnny looked like he'd cry even as he was laughing at himself through the lines, and the sinking feeling in Edgar's chest was now coupled with the prickling burn that always raced through Edgar's veins any time he and Johnny's hands touched.  Johnny let go of him before the other two could disapprove too strongly, but he still lingered near Edgar as his ability to perform a lie faded.

  
  
“Oh no, oh no no no  
Oh no, oh no no no”

 

Jimmy and Tenna were enthusiastic about the end of the song, mockingly making a giant show of falling to the floor while singing their 'oh no's, and unknowingly covering for Johnny's crumbling facade.  He put on one last burst of it to tell them good night.

 

“That should be sufficient, I hope?” He bowed to both of them with a bit of extra flourish in his hands, and they returned the gesture.  Edgar opted not to.  He was probably never going to be a bowing person.

 

“It'll do for now,” Jimmy answered.  “But I want you to stay for the German ones next time.”

 

Johnny nodded.  “Tomorrow. I just have to eat something before I fall over.”

 

Tenna flopped into a chair and waved Edgar and Johnny away.  “Have a good night, gentlemen.”

 

Johnny made a faint growling noise. “Ten.”

 

“Fuck, sorry.  I'm used to thinking of that as neutral.” She stuck out her lower lip and twirled her kazoo. “Wait, that's fucked up, isn't it?”

 

Johnny laughed weakly as he backed toward the door. “It is. Feel free to make up something else.”

 

She saluted. “Good night, Comrades.”

 

Edgar waved and held the choir room door open. “Night, Tenna. Night, Jimmy.”

 

The second they were around the corner and out of sight, Johnny collapsed against the wall.

 

Edgar dove for him and managed to keep him from sliding to the floor.

 

“Holy shit! Are you okay?”

 

Johnny's head rolled to one side. He moaned and flailed ineffectively against Edgar's grasp.

 

“Hang on, hang on.” Edgar tried to lower Johnny to the floor, but Johnny dug his fingers into Edgar's arm in response.

 

“No, no, not here. They'll--” Johnny struggled with his words, and Edgar could have fought him to the floor in this state, but he would never have forgiven himself. He tried to support Johnny and have as little contact as possible at the same time.

 

“Can you get home?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Don't lie to me.”

 

Johnny swallowed once, and closed his eyes. “If you help,” he said.

 

“Okay, come on. Let's go before they see.”

 

And here he was, not even considering that the others could help him haul Johnny home more effectively.  Someone Jimmy and Tenna cared about had suddenly failed to function properly thirty feet from where they were singing and playing a kazoo, and Edgar was hiding it from them automatically and without a second good-conscience thought.

 

As they passed Pepito's not-house, Edgar remembered the camera in his pocket.  He couldn't use it now, even if Johnny consented, but as he realized how complicit he'd become in Johnny's secrets, he wondered how he'd ever have the courage or fortitude to use it in the face of Johnny saying no.  He wasn't afraid of retaliation, or lashing out, or general anger, but he was afraid of losing their close connection. 

 

But, surely breaking someone's trust wasn't a show of strength? Unless you really care and it turns out well in the end, said television, then it's some kind of honorable action.  But Johnny... Johnny was not television.  Edgar had never seen anything like him in any media but real life.  Even helping him home was more difficult than TV had ever made supporting someone with your shoulders look.

 

Edgar stumbled through the front door, using mostly his shoulder and elbow to get them inside, and helped Johnny to the couch, where he flopped down like a rag doll.

 

“Do you want some water?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny nodded and closed his eyes and Edgar almost believed he was asleep when he returned with the glass.

 

“Here.”

 

Johnny nodded in lieu of any verbal expression of thanks and downed the glass.  He curled up and dug his fingers into his arms again.

 

“I'll go look for gloves for you if you're okay alone for a few minutes.”

 

A nod again and Johnny rolled over, turning his back to Edgar.

 

 

 

It was difficult to be in the basement for any length of time.  Every time Edgar thought he'd found something fun or pleasant, there was some reason for Johnny to have a bad reaction to it. It varied between terrifying and, frankly, frustrating.  It wasn't that he thought that Johnny was faking just to be contrary or difficult, but that there was _so much_ down here and so little actually helped Edgar with that whole 'making Johnny happy' thing he was evidently supposed to be doing.

 

Supposed to be doing, and wanted to do, even if there was no obligation.

 

The newest box of things for Johnny featured some more CDs, several boxes of macaroni, a small vial of beads, and one small pair of charcoal-colored fingerless gloves.

 

It was only a little while ago that Johnny wanted or needed them.  An hour, at most.  Did they appear here the moment he mentioned it? Who was listening to them that knew they needed all this?

 

He pulled the camera from his pocket and considered leaving it on in his basement instead of taking it to Pepito's, but repocketed it and resolved to ask Johnny about it -- and several other things -- once he was feeling better.

 

The latest box of things just for Edgar included some sheet music, several new issues of supernatural nonsense magazine he felt guilty being a fan of after knowing Dib, some socks, and, strangely, a silver necklace featuring a crop circle etched pendant.

 

It made him smile in light of Dib and Pepito and everything else. It was a nice change.

 

He pocketed the necklace, threw everything else into one box, and brought it all upstairs.

 

It was faint, but Edgar heard Johnny mutter-singing to himself in the living room.  He stood by his keyboard and just listened for a few seconds.  This was Johnny not performing.  This was Johnny just coping, existing.  What had Johnny been like before he met Devi and had to put on a show?

 

Was Edgar different now that he'd met the others?  He'd never been alone since meeting them.

 

_Is it possible to fall out of practice being yourself?_

 

Edgar recognized the tune even muffled by Johnny's breathing and the couch cushions.

 

“ _When I get through this part_

_will the next one be the same?_

_Will I be wondering_

_if I'm awake?”_

 

It had been fun and charming when Johnny sang it with the rest of the group.  It was one of the first things Edgar had done with the others, and remembering Devi's face, and Jimmy with the cup, and Tenna pulling out bits of his hair made Edgar smile.

 

This trip through the song was less fun.

 

With one hand, Edgar played a few notes of the song along with Johnny's hushed singing, and Johnny startled a little, but continued.

 

“ _When I get through this day_

_can someone tell me how_

_and how much longer now_

_Am I Awake?”_

 

Johnny seemed determined to drag himself through the whole song, but did not sound like he was enjoying it.  Edgar stopped playing along to 'Am I Awake' and played a few intro notes of something he knew usually cheered Johnny up.

 

Johnny stopped singing, and may have even laughed into the cushion when he heard the change.

 

“I love Belarus,” Edgar chanted along to the five singular notes he plinked out on the keyboard.

 

“Congratulations,” Johnny said from the couch.  He was _definitely_ laughing.

 

Edgar left the keyboard and sat on the floor with his back against the front of the couch.  He opened one of his basement-gifted magazines and then held up the gloves for Johnny.  “Here.” Johnny turned part of the way around to look. “The basement has provided for its fucked up tenants once more.”

 

Johnny rolled the whole way over and even sat up a little, bracing his back against the arm of the couch. “Thanks.”

 

He looked at the gloves and twisted his mouth a little, but then pulled them on.

 

“Does that feel better?”

 

“My hands feel better.” He smiled, but looked to be in pain. “But I know it's because my head is fucked up, so it's kind of a shitty better.”

 

The magazine he'd been given seemed less ridiculous than some of the ones he'd been sent before.  The raging hyperbole and thin conclusions that had made all the other issues so entertaining were gone, and replaced with actual compelling evidence.  The magazine as a whole reminded him of Dib, which reminded him that there was a lot to try to talk about.

 

“Do you feel up to talking for a bit?  There's some shit I need to sort out.”

 

Johnny sighed dramatically and looked at the far wall.  “Do I have a choice?”

 

“Of course. Now or later.”

 

He ran a hand through his hair and then stared at his palm as he pulled it away.  “Let's get it over with, then.”

 

Edgar set his magazine down and turned sideways so he was looking at Johnny.  “You don't have to say it like that.  We can start with the easy stuff.”

 

“Fuck, I've agreed to a multi-faceted interrogation.”

 

"I'm not dripping water on your head, calm down."

 

Johnny made a face at him.  Seeing someone pull their lips back shouldn't have been endearing, and yet, here it was.  

 

“I'd really like you to tell me about your thing with 'gentlemen' and 'guy' and whatever else,' Edgar said.  "I've known you a long time to not know about whatever that is, and I'm not really sure why you haven't told me.  It sounds like it's important to you.”

 

Johnny perked up from his defeated posture and blinked in surprise.  “Seriously? _This_ is what you wanted to know about?”

 

Edgar shrugged and put his elbow on the couch cushion next to him.  “I told you, it's the easy part.  The rest of it is related to supernatural shit.”

 

Johnny shook his head slowly and held up a hand, trying to gesture an explanation out.  “It's that I just don't like it.  It feels as wrong applied to me as 'John' did.”

 

“So you just don't like male things or...?”

 

“I don't like gender things for me, mostly.”

 

“But 'he' is okay?”

 

“I know, I know.” Johnny laughed a little. “No one else understands that, but it's sort of like what Tenna was saying about 'gentlemen', I guess.  Neutral, or whatever, even though that's still fucked up.  It's comfortable, I'm okay with it because I lack anything better and I guess I'd use something else if I found it, I'm just not comfortable with being any particular gender anything and 'she' tends to make people think you're pre-defined in a way that that 'he' doesn't.  I'd kind of rather be my own thing, or both things, or nothing, rather than explicitly male or female.”

 

“I see.” Though, mostly, he did not.

 

And Johnny could tell.

 

“Okay, try this.  You'd be uncomfortable if I called you 'she,' right?”

 

“Yes.  Considerably.”

 

“It's the same feeling for me being called boy, or guy, or gentleman, or girl, or whatever.”

 

Edgar propped his head up with his hand.  “You _do_ kind of come off as male, though.”  He added quickly.  "That's not a challenge!  Just sort of how it looks from outside."

 

Johnny shrugged.  “That's fine if people see it that way, though I might argue and say that if Devi and I switched brains, there wouldn't be much of a difference. There's nothing either of us do that's male or female, we're just comfortable with the implications of a different set of pronouns.  Devi could be just like me and still use 'she' if she wanted.”

 

“Okay, sure.”  There were clearly layers to this he'd never explored, but there was a surface level that Edgar could grasp, at the very least.

 

There was a beat of silence and then Johnny laughed.  “Was that it? Not going to ask me weird invasive personal questions about my anatomy or something?”

 

“No?” He drummed his fingers on his leg.  “I would like to know why you didn't mention it a long time ago, though.”

 

“If they made a Hallmark card for that, I'd have stolen one and given it to you.  Hard to know at what point in a new relationship to tell people shit like that, though.  Do you start it off that way, or wait until they're comfortable, you know?”

 

Edgar's chest sort of twinged at the word 'relationship' even though Johnny was using it completely neutrally.

 

“ _You_ make considerations for people's comfort?”

 

“Ha, very funny.” Johnny stopped mocking him suddenly, shrugged, and really looked sincerely _okay._   “Maybe I consider _yours.”_

 

Edgar wanted to just beam at him.  Instead they blinked at each other for awkwardly longer than necessary.  Johnny looked away and picked at the hem of his shirt.

 

“You consider _mine_ frequently,” he said, apparently as some way of explanation.

 

“In light of that, then, is there anything I need to do?  What do I call this?  Or do I not talk about it?  The others know, right?”

 

“I don't know what it's called other than 'Nny.'  Tenna told me there were some words for... all sorts of shit that applies to me, but it starts feeling like I step out of one box and right back into another one to put too many names on it.” He looked up from fussing with his shirt. “But if we ever end up needing to explain it to someone outside our circle – you know, new people who can see us – we'll see how far we can get with just 'Nny,' and break out 'non-binary' for someone who needs it spelled out.”

 

Edgar felt better about everything and was almost angry at himself that he did.  Johnny smiling and talking about some future made things feel better that probably shouldn't be.

 

“Sounds good.  In the meantime, is there anything I should avoid?  Anything I've been doing that's upsetting?”

 

Making Johnny happy would be respecting this, even if Edgar couldn't completely relate to it.  He was good at keeping away from Johnny because he didn't like to be touched, so he could be good about not making comments in the vein of 'guy' too.

 

Johnny waved him away. “You're fine.  Almost always have been, really. I'm not worried about you.  Avoid cramming me into a metaphorical box, and we'll continue on much in the same vein as before.”

 

“Actual boxes are cool, though?”

 

Johnny grinned.  “Yeah, though, if I might offer a tip, it would probably be easier if you removed all my limbs first.”

 

“At the joints for easier separation.  Right.”  He'd learned that on some crime show or another.

 

“There you go.  I'm small and kinda bendy, but you'd still save space packing femurs separately.  Longest bone in the body.”

 

An hour or so ago, Johnny had been having a minor meltdown over perceived blood on his hands, now he was joking casually about his own murder.  The Johnny C Method for coping existed on the extreme ends of a spectrum – avoid it, or charge head on – and no where in between.

 

“I'll keep that in mind for some night when you aren't interesting anymore, or when the basement makes me its slave.”

 

He could have just sat with Johnny and done nothing the rest of the afternoon.  Read his magazine, played some music, had Johnny sing the ridiculous song about the credit union.  It was easy to want to do nothing with him when faced with the weight of the things he knew they'd have to do.  It wasn't really that hard to understand why Johnny wanted to ignore everything.

 

The little camera in his pocket poked his leg.

 

“So, come on, where's the rest of it?” Johnny prompted.

 

“The rest of – Oh. Yeah.  What it boils down to is, predictably, that I think we should go see Pepito and Todd again.”

 

Johnny's hand immediately went to his neck and he twisted the key necklace around on his fingers. “You really think he'll tell us anything he won't immediately wipe from our minds?  Why risk it and waste our time?”

 

“Well...” He pulled the tiny camera from his pocket and held it out between his thumb and forefinger. “I got this from Dib.”

 

Johnny held his hand out and Edgar dropped it into his gloved palm.  Johnny squinted at it and brought it close to his face.  “Is that a tiny fucking _lens_? Is this a camera?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What makes him think it'll work?”

 

Edgar looked at the magazine sitting on the coffee table and immediately felt a bit foolish. “He said it was _alien technology_.”

 

The agonizing span of time that Johnny spent looking between Edgar and the tiny camera in his hand was somewhere between three seconds and three hours and during that time, Edgar's mind spun out in three million variations of Johnny telling him he was out of his fucking mind.

 

“Dib really walks a fine line between genius and madness, doesn't he?”

 

“I'm afraid of what agreeing with the statement will say about me.”

 

Johnny laughed softly and brought the camera up close to one eye as he closed the other one.  “So he wants us to go there and record it.”

 

“So he can have his people analyze it.”

 

“How _many_ people, exactly?”

 

Edgar shook his head. “I don't know, I didn't think to ask.  I thought you'd be absolutely against this no matter what, so I didn't fish for details.”

 

“I really don't want Dib involved and asking me questions.”

 

“I know, I know.”  Edgar clenched his fingers and tried not be extremely frustrated. “You don't want to tell anyone _anything,_ I know.”

 

Johnny passed the camera back.  “Hold onto it. We'll see.”

 

“What about Todd?” Edgar asked, suddenly hit with spark of hope. “What if you try to talk to just him?”

 

“Oh, and do what?  Walk up like, ' _Hey, Pepito! Can Todd come out and play?_ '”

 

“He saw us on the roof.  He might come out to see us if we could get his attention.  Assuming Todd is as normal as he looks, he probably can't wipe our memories, and the video seems to indicate he wouldn't want to.  If we talked to him, we wouldn't have to use the camera at all.”

 

Johnny narrowed his eyes and turned his head slowly to look at Edgar.  “Why are you so obsessed with this?”

 

“Why _aren't_ you? It's _your_ neck Pepito stuck something to.  It's _your_ name it reacts to, it's _your_ things in the basement, it's _your_ brain!”

 

“You haven't answered my question.”

 

“I-” He picked up his hands and began gesturing with every point.  “I like you, I'm worried about you, I'm interested, I'm curious, I'm _involved_ .  Todd said something bad would happen to _both_ of us and I have enough self interest to want to avoid that.”

 

Johnny held tight with both hands to his necklace.  He pulled it so tight it was digging into the flesh on the back of his neck.

 

“Todd knows what it does, Nny.”  He lowered his voice and tried to divorce it from the rush of frustration and passion he felt for the subject in general.  “He might know how to get rid of it.”

 

“I know,” Johnny replied quietly.

 

“Can we try? Please?”

 

Johnny held his hands up in front of him.  Edgar looked up at them while Johnny let out a long sigh.

 

“I don't think they're ever going to feel clean again,” Johnny said.  “So we might as well go.”

 

“Should I try the camera?”

 

Johnny dropped his hands into his lap and shrugged. “Sure.”

 

The air of defeat was a little heavier than Edgar had hoped for.  “Nny, I don't want to force you.  I just want you to feel better and for us to figure all this out, and I think this is going to help.”

 

“Devi told me you heard her song while you had that little photoshoot,” Johnny said wearily.

 

“Yeah.”  Edgar smiled with lingering pride over the memory of her saying she hadn't expected him to be able to.

 

“Tell me when you hear Jimmy's, okay?”

 

Edgar nodded and held back questions about Johnny's own song.  “How does your head feel?”

 

“Foggy. Crowded.”

 

“Can I help?”

 

Johnny smiled weakly and shook his head. “No.”

 

Edgar turned away from Johnny and reclined against the couch again. “Let me know if or when I can.”

 

“Sure.”

 

The magazine still sat on the coffee table and as Edgar reached for it, Johnny swung his legs around and rose from the couch.

 

“Do you need something?” Edgar asked.

 

“Just going up to the bathroom.  I'm fine.  Read your weird garbage.”

 

Edgar opened the magazine to a random page and began reading in the middle of an article.  He'd originally started reading these in hopes of discovering what was wrong with him.  Then, he began hoping he was a supernatural creature himself.  Finally, he became hooked on the terrible articles as easily as he became a fan of bad movies and the constant loop of reruns of various versions of Star Trek on late night TV.

 

This particular article was surprisingly well-written, despite being about someone who believed he'd saved the world multiple times from an alien threat that had once infiltrated his elementary school.  The article continued on to talk about this 'Membrane' person's recent discoveries in the field of alien technology and Edgar began getting a strange feeling about the content of this magazine compared to previous ones.  Had there ever before been an attempt to interview someone of any real importance in this magazine?  Wasn't it all usually just regurgitated folklore, dubious Photoshop skills, and out of context quotes?  Edgar flipped to the beginning of the article, and there he saw a picture of Dib.

 

Did the basement think he needed proof?  A necklace to mount that camera and a magazine attempting to vouch for Dib's legitimacy?

 

“Holy shit!” and the sound of shattering glass rang out from upstairs and Edgar scrambled to his feet, the magazine flapping from his hand and sliding across the floor.

 

He scaled the stairs like a crippled animal, all flailing limbs and panic.  He flung the bathroom door open and found Johnny braced against the window in the wall opposite the mirror.

 

“What the fuck happened? Are you okay?”

 

Johnny's chest was heaving and he had a tight grip on the window sill.  A tiny stream of blood snaked its way from his still-gloved palm and dripped onto the floor.

 

When Edgar stepped the whole way inside, in an attempt to pry Johnny from the window, he saw the massive crack and smear of blood on the mirror.  A few pieces of glass had fallen into the sink and onto the floor, but it was largely still intact.

 

Three versions of Edgar looked out from the mirror, and when Edgar adjusted the angle of his gaze, three of Johnny did too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of shit in here, damn. 
> 
> Devi's song, first of all. I enjoy getting Edgar out with other people, and I loved the idea of these two doing an art project together in some fashion. I really want to draw the portraits she took. Someday, I'm sure! 
> 
> This also features the return of Dib and his convenient technology, haha. I always liked the way the world in Invader Zim seemed run down, but with really exception technology, even for people who were not Zim. Dib had all sorts of good stuff because his dad was single-handedly inventing the future. Take what you will out of the article! So far, there's not really an answer for what went down with Zim in any kind of SWAN continuity, or if he was ever there at all. 
> 
> Johnny and Tenna talk about a bunch of things here that I think are important or interesting, but maybe they belong in a commentary or DVD extras sort of file rather than down here. Related to that, however, is that Johnny finally gets to explain his repeated iffy to irritated reactions to gendered stuff being thrown his way during the course of this story. I used to say back when I was doing ISH in particular, that this group was two guys, two girls, and Johnny. I didn't know about being non-binary or agender or anything of the sort then, but when I realized I had the chance to make that an actual thing that is stated in the text for him (along with his sexuality, which will come up later), I definitely went with it. I wanted him to feel it and live with it and deal with correcting people who actually do try and learn not to do stuff that he doesn't like. 
> 
> Most of this stuff is definitely not in the original version of the story. I feel like I'll be saying that more often than not from here on out. But thanks to Dib, we can see a lot more shit happening with Pepito and a bit of the kind of weirdish magic that exists around Edgar and the others existing. We also get a tiiiiny bit of foreshadow to ISH for those in the know about such things. Dib is one of those things that I am really mad at myself for not including in the original , because he just makes a lot of sense and he's a useful resource! 
> 
>  
> 
> The song is 
> 
> "Smile Like You Mean It" and though it's originally by the Killers and that particular version will work, the first one I heard, and thus the one I hear here, is the Tally Hall cover version of it. 
> 
> And, of course, there are snippets of "Am I Awake" and the singular line of "I Love Belarus". 
> 
> Devi's song, "Work In Progress" was written by me. There's more of it than what we see here, but we'll get to that in later bits.


	13. small, local, ethical and cooperative to the core

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny and Edgar learn some things from Pepito and Squee and are forced to share them with the rest of the class. Edgar wonders how long he can keep lying, while Johnny plans to forever.

 

Edgar couldn't shake the image of the other versions of Johnny staring at him, even as he sat on the edge of the bed in the next room bandaging current-Johnny's hand.  Thankfully, Johnny hadn't punched the glass. Instead, he'd lashed out at it with the soap dispenser, so his cuts were not nearly as bad as they could have been.

 

The other versions of Johnny in the mirror were faint, but they were terrifying.  Neither Edgar nor Johnny seemed capable of acknowledging aloud just how scary they were, so they stood in silence while Edgar finished with the bandages.  The Johnny that matched Edgar's scariest mirror companion – the one at the back – was easily the most unsettling of anyone in the mirror, Edgar or Johnny.  Current Johnny was skinny, and maybe a little unhealthy.  Edgar knew he didn't sleep well or often enough.  He was a little ashy, and there was dark around his eyes that was probably not _all_ leftover eye-makeup.  But the last Johnny in the mirror? It was Edgar's Johnny plus five or ten years of not sleeping, not eating, and possibly living in a cave. He'd looked haunted and haunting, terrified and terrifying.

 

Edgar's own memories filled in the more he saw the other faces.  The second Johnny, the one who had existed just before the life he was living now, was the one Edgar had wanted to save, or help, or make happy.  He was the one some version of Edgar had been strange friends with.  Edgar recognized every feature on his face both as the person he cared about now, and the person who had owned the ugly gray car and liked getting four a.m. Freezies.

 

That was the guy who was damaged enough to need help, but who was also with it enough that Edgar remembered having prolonged and almost fun contact with him.

 

After seeing Johnny's extra faces, Edgar's own reflections became blurry.  If he assumed Johnny had reflections now because he remembered more, and that it was the same for both of them, then it didn't make sense that Edgar's would be signaling some kind of un-remembering.  So, with nothing else to go on, he took it to mean that they were going to change soon and the blur was a stand in for some kind of chrysalis stage.

 

It could have been complete bullshit, but it was worrying that the blur happened at all, even if his theory of why was wrong.

 

Edgar sat back from Johnny's hand. “How's that?”

 

Johnny pulled his glove on over the bandages. “Good.”  Then, several seconds later, “Thanks.”

 

“Do you want to t-”

 

“It's getting worse, isn't it?”

 

Edgar tossed the bandages back into the box of first aid supplies with a resigned sigh.  There was a temptation to reassure Johnny otherwise, but it seemed cruel and counter-productive to lie to him. “Yeah.”

 

“You'd think – you'd think I'd be able to just brush that off.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I've been looking at _yours_ for this long.”

 

“It's different when they just show up after never being there.  I wouldn't expect you to casually accept it just because you're used to mine.”

 

Johnny squeezed his bandaged hand and Edgar flinched.  “What was wrong with me? You know, back then.”

 

“Enough that we're here now.”

 

“I want them to go away,” Johnny whispered.

 

Edgar had never given much thought to what he would do without the extra faces.  If he woke up one morning and they were gone for good, he might be more concerned than grateful.  But, Johnny, of course, was different.  Edgar's had been there all his life, looked only slightly strange at worst, and were like odd company. Johnny's had just appeared and they were... terrifying.

 

Still, Edgar thought he could provide some vague comfort to this situation. “We can ask whenever we go--”

 

“You really think Squee knows everything?!” Johnny snapped.

 

“Hey, don't scream at me, I'm trying to help!”  

 

“You're screaming too!”

 

“Because I'm frustrated that I keep having to put band-aids on the emotional equivalent of gaping head wounds!”  He hadn't meant it to come out, he hadn't even realized he was that upset.  Rather than scream again, though, Johnny blinked once, frowned, and leaned away from Edgar.  Edgar took two deep breaths. Screaming had never worked with Johnny; it was probably a fluke that it had startled him enough to keep him quiet just now.

 

“We're playing music because it keeps your head occupied,” Edgar explained slowly, “when we could be looking into what's actually happening to your head at the same time.”

 

“You just want me to go nuts, then?”

 

“No, of course I don't, but we've just been treating the symptoms and soon you'll just be sweeping so much under the rug that eventually you'll want to sweep the _rug_ under the rug and something will snap!” He raised his hands for a moment, thinking he was going to launch into a larger explanation, but then just dropped them and concentrated on slow, calming breathing.  “I don't think Todd has all the answers, no.  I don't think even Pepito has them all.  I'm _sure_ that Dib doesn't.  But what answers they _do_ have could help us get more.  Maybe they'll make all this stop, or at least help us understand why so much is happening to you and not to me. If we understand why, we can at least use a more efficient bandage.”

 

“Let's go, then.”

 

“What, _now?”_

 

“Before I change my mind.” He stood up and looked at his bandaged hand. “Or it's changed for me.”

 

 

 

 

It was just about to get dark by the time they got outside, and the streetlamps came on one by one as they walked.  They passed Jimmy's trailer with a light on inside, and Edgar felt a slight stab of guilt.

 

It was possible Johnny couldn't even _feel_ guilt when it came to Jimmy.

 

Edgar had attached the tiny camera to the new crop circle necklace, turned it on, and just let it run as they stood in front of Pepito's house.

 

“Do we need to narrate this like we're on a documentary?” Johnny asked.

 

“It's Dib's.  I'm sure this thing knows what day and time it is.”

 

“There's probably a fucking stardate on there, too.” Johnny set his shoulders. “Captain's Log, Stardate Bullshitty Bullshit Point Two: Have beamed down to the mystery planet made of stock footage and plastic plants.  Gonna do something extremely fucking stupid and get my head wiped.”

 

“Why do you get to be the captain?”

 

Johnny smiled at him.  It was a little tired-looking, but it was one of the most normal smiles Edgar had ever seen from him. “You really think I'd settle for anything else? Besides, you'd be a much better science officer than I would – you're logical and shit.  I'm playing to our strengths here.”

 

“I hope that means I'm an alien.”

 

“Me too.”

 

Edgar took a deep breath. “Okay, you ready?”

 

“Nope. Let's do it.”

 

On television, Edgar would have squeezed Johnny's hand as some sort of indication of solidarity and fondness, Johnny would have understood Edgar's crush without him having to say a word, and they both would have derived some kind of new unbeatable resolve from the gesture.

 

Instead, Johnny had vetoed touch in any fashion, his own hands terrified him, and the hand closest to Edgar had just that evening been slashed open by a broken mirror.

 

They took the stairs together, their boots hitting the old rotting wood in unison.

 

“I wish I knew what I was standing on,” Johnny whispered. He picked up his hand to knock on the door and let it hover in the air a few seconds before committing. Edgar looked at him and tried to smile reassuringly, though his guts were churning.

 

Inside the house, something crashed and there was some loud but indecipherable yelling.

 

Todd flung open the door, eyes wide.

 

He leaned outside and kept his voice low. “What are you _doing?”_

 

“We need to talk to you,” Edgar said.

 

“You need to get out of here!” Todd hissed.

 

Johnny took a step forward, and Todd flinched. “Tell me about this key. Tell me anything. There is shit happening to my head and I know you know something about it.”

 

Todd tightened his grip on the door and looked over his shoulder. “Hang on,” he said suddenly, and ducked back inside. “Pepe!” he called into the house. “There are Girl Scouts, what flavor do you want?”

 

Johnny put his hands on his hips and frowned at the door. “Girl Scouts? What the fuck, Squee, what are you going to do when you come back empty-handed?”

 

“It sounded to me like he asked what flavor _Girl Scout_ Pepito wanted to eat. Not what flavor cookie.”

 

“If someone is going to eat me, they will not do it thinking I'm a fucking Girl Scout.”

 

Edgar looked at the bricks and the details around the door and wondered how it could all be such a good simulation. “Do they have a division for Non-binary Scouts?”

 

Johnny grinned and Edgar quietly hoped he'd just caught it on camera.  “We go door to door selling bottled curses and sensible footwear.”

 

The door opened again and Todd rushed out, pulling the door closed behind him.

 

“It's the key to Hell,” he said quickly.

 

Johnny jumped back a step. “Say what now?”

 

“The key to Hell,” Todd repeated. “Please don't waste time asking for how and why, I'm telling you that's what it is.”

 

Edgar stepped forward to compensate for Johnny's reaction. “Why does Pepito have that? Why did he--?”

 

“That's what Pepe _is_ , he was just born into it.  His dad was Satan, there was an accident.”

 

“Pepito is _Satan_?” Johnny's lips curled a bit in some rare disgust and alarm.

 

“No, his _dad_ was!”

 

“And you _live_ with him?” There was a tone in Johnny's voice that hadn't been there a moment ago. He sounded older, he sounded concerned, he sounded like a person Edgar had once sipped Freezies with. “This doesn't seem a great step up from your parents.”

 

Todd winced. “You _do_ remember. I'm... I'm really sorry. But it's complicated, it's not – I'm fine. Until all this happened, it was fun.”

 

“Until what happened?” Edgar asked.

 

“He messed everything up and he gave Johnny the key to stop it from happening again because he thought it all made sense somehow, I don't know. He isn't really a bad person, he's just kind of lost. I don't think he really had any idea all this would happen.”

 

The door clicked behind him and he jumped. “Ah! Go! Get out of here!”

 

Johnny looked at Edgar and his gaze flicked to Edgar's neck, and the camera, for a fraction of a second.  “No,” Johnny said firmly. “I want to talk to him.”

 

When Pepito stepped outside he was smiling and charming, just as he had been the last time. “Well, hello again. You're easily the most poorly dressed Girl Scouts I've ever seen.”

 

Todd stepped in front of Pepito. “Pepe, don't, it was my idea.  They should know what's going on.”

 

Pepito didn't loom or begin phasing through the floor.  He only smiled and asked casually, “What did you tell them?”

 

“Son of Satan,” Edgar said.

 

“Key to Hell,” Johnny chimed in.

 

Pepito sighed and then dramatically shrugged. “Well, that saves me the effort of keeping up appearances, then.” A kind of ripple washed over him and he shook off the facade of 'passably normal' like a thin jacket. His horns became visible, his skin grew a bit greener, one of his eyes became larger and took on a dead stare, and he blurred a bit at the edges.

 

“Are you after the meaning of life, too?” Pepito asked, inspecting his nails.

 

“Just the meaning of mine,” Johnny said.

 

“You,” Pepito pointed at Johnny, “are terribly inconvenient.” He tapped his finger against his chin as he turned to Edgar. “Though it could be I'm thinking of you.”

 

“Inconvenient?” Johnny squeaked a bit in his outrage. It would have been funny at any other time. “Inconvenient is being attacked by your own head!”

 

Pepito folded one arm over his chest, tucking his hand into his elbow with the other still posed in thought against his jaw. He sighed a bit and fluttered his eyelids, dramatically bored with the entire exchange. “And you will _never believe_ that I am not responsible for that.”

 

“Then who _is_?”

 

Pepito gestured sweetly to Edgar. “Him.”

 

Johnny's eyes widened and he stared into Edgar with a blank expression, waiting for his response.

 

“What are you talking about?!” Edgar's chest hurt. He knew that whatever Pepito could tell him wouldn't have been something he did on purpose even if it were true, but even the idea that it had been _him_ hurting Johnny like this made him feel a bit sick.

 

Pepito dropped his arms and whined. “Oh, come on, surely you've heard all of this already? Didn't Squee tell you everything and expose me as a heartless monster?”

 

“I told them what I thought I could,” Todd said. “I told them the parts that make sense to me. The rest of it is your crazy shit, and I'm never sure if you're making it up!”

 

“He specifically said you aren't a monster,” Edgar offered. “But you--”

 

Pepito ignored Edgar and grinned fondly at Todd, exposing several fangs. “Ah, Amigo, I knew you wouldn't let me down.”

 

“Hey!” Edgar stepped forward with so much purpose that Todd jumped.

 

“I'm not going to stand here and conveniently give you all the answers.” Pepito brushed his nails over his chest and inspected them again.

 

Johnny glared up at Pepito, his hands balled into fists at his sides. “You're doing so well already.”

 

“I am, aren't I?” He smiled sweetly at Johnny and glanced down at the key on his neck. He poked the key firmly, pressing it between Johnny's collarbones. “You seem fond of this. This pleases me.”

 

Edgar blurted out, “It's stuck there,” before Johnny could voice any objection to Pepito's proximity.

 

Todd plastered one hand over his face and let it pull at his features as it slid down. “Dammit... For _real?”_

 

Pepito put on quite a show of being offended. “What? _I_ didn't put it on his neck.”

 

“Get it off of him,” Todd said firmly. “That's not--”

 

“You know I can't do that!”

 

Johnny stomped on the porch and screamed up at Pepito. “You're _Satan_ , and you can't take a fucking necklace off my neck?”

 

Todd grabbed Pepito's elbow and shook his arm. “Pepito, you can't leave it like this!”

 

“I thought you were afraid of him,” Pepito sneered, tearing his arm away.

 

“I--” Todd glanced apprehensively at Johnny. “I was. But it's not _him_ , he's not--”

 

“Oh, it's him,” Pepito said. “If he's coming to me screaming about his head, it's him.”

 

“You still haven't explained how that's _my_ fault,” Edgar said.

 

 _“You_ asked for all this, didn't you?”

 

“No,” Edgar replied immediately. “No, that wasn't me. _I_ have done nothing but read magazines, watch movies on tv, and play around on a keyboard all my life. _”_

 

Pepito waved his hand at Edgar as though trying to shoo an insect through an open window. “Well, it's one of you three. Which doesn't really matter. You're all lucky I'm feeling charitable enough to even have this conversation.”

 

 _Three?_ _Can he see the others without a mirror?_

 

“You're not feeling charitable,” Todd insisted, “you're feeling _guilty_!”

 

“What the fuck is all of this?” came a voice from the sidewalk.

 

Devi.

 

Edgar turned to see her standing on the sidewalk under one of the streetlamps, carrying her large art portfolio and an unamused expression.

 

“Oh, good, you _do_ have other friends,” Pepito said distantly. “I was beginning to worry you only had Glasses here.”

 

Johnny looked like he wanted to bolt for the nearest hedge. “What are you doing?”

 

Devi put one hand on her hip. “Going home, what's it to you? I stayed in the lab to develop some shit. Who are these losers you're talki-- Can they see you?”

 

“Hola!” Pepito chirped.

 

Devi blinked and Edgar saw her jaw drop a bit. “Um, hello.”

 

“Would you care to join us?” Pepito bowed and held out his hand invitingly.

 

Edgar did his best to convey 'no, no, for the love of fuck no' with out making a sound and utilizing minimal movement in his face. Devi seemed to get the message.

 

“No...,” she responded slowly, nodding slightly at Edgar. “I have to get these prints home, and Tenna's making dinner.”

 

 _“Very well.”_ Pepito gave a nod of his head. “Perhaps another time. Have a lovely evening.”

 

“Sure.” She shifted the weight of her portfolio on her shoulder and turned toward her house. “Nny, I'll call you later.”

 

Johnny nodded, just barely. “Okay.”

 

They watched Devi walk down the block until she turned the corner. Edgar was frankly relieved that Devi had seen them. This might finally be one more thing he didn't have to help Johnny hide.

 

“Well, this is has been charming,” Pepito sighed, “but I think we ought to be going now.”

 

“Why did you give me this?” Johnny demanded.

 

Pepito shrugged. “Because I needed someone else to have it, and after talking to Squee, you seemed like a good candidate.”

 

“Don't blame this on _me,”_ Todd countered. “I'm not going to be responsible for any of this.”

 

“I'm just stating the facts.” He folded his hands together in front of him and looked at Edgar and Johnny like they were knick-knacks he was considering rearranging. “Now, what to do with you today, huh? I could send you home like last time, but you'll know what we said anyway, won't you?” He reached out with a single finger and flicked the pendant/camera combo on Edgar's neck, sending Edgar's heart racing. “Do tell our friend I said hello, and congratulations on his find.”

 

He left the camera apparently unharmed and turned to Johnny. “As for why I gave that to you, it was for the best. It's equally for the best that you don't know specifics, and that you stay away from here.”

 

Breathing heavily, Johnny slowly wrapped his hand around the key and nodded toward Pepito's door. “It opens something in there, doesn't it? Or one of the locks on your--”

 

“That's enough,” Pepito said, taking Johnny by the shoulders and spinning him around toward the stairs. “You should leave now before you are forced to. I'm sorry about your brains, but none of that is my fault. Talk to the people upstairs about why their systems are so faulty if you're so worried about your gray matter.”

 

“Pepito,” Todd said quietly.

 

“Shush.”

 

“What kind of Satan gives away the key to Hell?” Johnny snapped.

 

Pepito patted Johnny's head and shoved him toward the stairs. “My father.”

 

Edgar jumped down two steps to stabilize Johnny, who was wobbling on his feet.  When he looked back to Pepito, he and Todd were gone.

 

“Are you okay?” It came automatically. It was nearly everything Edgar said to Johnny anymore.

 

Johnny braced himself against Edgar's shoulder and shook his head. “No.”

 

“What can I-?”

 

“I don't know!” Johnny wailed. “I don't know what _anyone_ can do! A man with horns and green skin and fucked up eyes and mind-wipey powers just told me that he's the son of _Satan_ and I have the key to _Hell_ fucking _stuck_ on my neck! What the fuck happens now?!”

 

“We talk to Devi?”

 

“God, of all fucking things... I have to tell her something.”

 

“The truth might be a good option. Come on, let's go home.”

 

Johnny slowed his breathing and pushed himself away from Edgar's shoulder. “What about the camera thing? For Dib.”

 

“He can wait until tomorrow.  He probably had a live feed as soon as I turned it on anyway.”

 

 

 

 

Devi called when they'd been home a little over half an hour, and Johnny willingly answered the phone, much to Edgar's surprise.

 

“Yeah, I'm alive,” Johnny said into the phone.

 

Edgar tried not to listen in and focus on his magazine, but other than the article about Dib, he was having trouble concentrating on this issue.

 

“Yes,” Johnny said.

 

There was a long pause while Devi delivered some kind of speech.

 

“He doesn't--”

 

Another stretch of silence.

 

“I really don't want to.”

 

And again.

 

“I'll see you tomorrow, then.”

 

And that, surprisingly, was that.

 

Edgar peered over the top of his magazine. “She didn't want all the details?”

 

“She wants me to explain it to her tomorrow,” Johnny grumbled. “With Jimmy and Tenna there too.”

 

“I know you're not excited about it, but I think it'll be better that way.”

 

Johnny put his face in his hands and pulled himself into a fetal position on the recliner. “They're going to see.”

 

There were windows and mirrors all over the choir room. The others were used to Edgar's three faces, but Johnny would be new. While it might help add some validity to the things Johnny had been claiming all this time, it wasn't going to comfort anyone.

 

“Then tell them outside. Let's meet here instead. In the backyard. We can play something, and you can tell them about Pepito, and they'll never have to see you reflected in anything.” He was so ready to help Johnny lie. Had they done this in every incarnation?

 

“Sure, I'll just avoid ever being anywhere with a reflection for the rest of my life.”

 

“What's wrong with them knowing about it? It's not like it reflects poorly on you or anything.”  He winced as soon as he said 'reflects', hoping Johnny wouldn't think he was making a bad joke.

 

“Edgar, they're fucking terrifying. My other faces look like people you see on the news or in crime documentaries at two in the morning. I look like a black and white photo of the unassuming quiet guy who had a tower of corpses in his basement.”

 

“I thought you _liked_ scaring people.”

 

Johnny uncurled himself a little and blinked at Edgar, while Edgar smiled at him.

 

“It won't be so bad,” Edgar said gently. “You know them, they know you. You guys bleed on things, haunt people, trip people, hit them with stuff.”

 

There was still silence from Johnny, but he was listening, so Edgar kept going.

 

“And, for what it's worth, I was friends with at least one of those faces once before, and I can do that again. I'm not going anywhere, and I don't think the others will either.” He shrugged. “If that's what you're worried about, I mean.”

 

Johnny smiled back at him. There was enough silence here that Edgar could say something, he could segue right from 'I'm not going anywhere' into 'because I like you,' and it would be one of the most natural spaces in a conversation that he could find to unload this, but today had been so full already...

 

It wasn't fair to make Johnny deal with Edgar and his non-supernatural feelings too.

 

That night, Edgar heard Johnny's headphones playing softly until the sun came up.  He didn't sleep well.

 

 

In the morning, Edgar fought against his aching neck and dragged himself out of bed and to the bathroom, where he found Johnny staring into the cracked mirror.  

 

"Oh.  Morning. Are you...?"

 

Johnny turned his head to look at Edgar, said nothing, but stepped to his left and gestured to the space beside him. Edgar joined him, though it was a little crowded for them both to stand in the tiny bathroom.

 

It was even more crowded in the mirror. Six people looked out from between the cracks and splinters in the glass, and half of them were objectively frightening.

 

“Watch,” Johnny said. He picked up his hand and held it in front of them. His reflections did the same. The difference, beyond that one of them was not wearing the fingerless gloves, was the blood on the reflections' hands.

 

Edgar inhaled sharply, but Johnny kind of snickered.

 

“I knew it was there,” Johnny whispered. “It actually feels better just to know there was a reason.”

 

“I'm glad it helps.” Edgar was sincere, though it was still worrying to see blood on any Johnny's hands.

 

“You look a little blurry,” Johnny said, nodding toward the mirror.

 

“Yeah. I think-” He hesitated to continue, but he was spending all this time trying to get Johnny to stop hiding that he'd feel more than a little hypocritical to hide things himself. “I think it's because they're going to change. I think I'm going to remember something that's going to change them.”

 

Johnny smiled – a crooked smile, but an enthusiastic one. “Yeah?”

 

“I'm not exactly looking forward to it.”

 

“Sure, but... you know, it'll be nice to have company.”

 

“You _always_ have company,” Edgar joked.

 

“It's not really company unless you're suffering together.”

 

“Is that so?”

 

“It's why we keep Jimmy around. He helps us all forge a bond of misery with his presence.”

 

Edgar laughed and stepped away from the mirror. “Are you ready to see them today?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “No. But I will.”

 

“Good.” Edgar was about to walk away and Johnny stopped him.

 

“Will you do me a favor before they come over?”

 

“Yeah, of course.” He may have been slightly too eager.

 

“Play for me? Something ridiculous?”

 

Edgar nodded and felt the grin taking over his whole face. “Sure. Anything you want.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“I hope that means you're singing along?”

 

Johnny looked into the mirror again, his eyes darting between each of the other faces. Faces who, presumably, didn't spend a whole lot of time singing.

 

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

 

 

 

 

Edgar was always happy to play. The basement supplied him with sheet music where it gave Johnny CDs and boots.  It had been comforting when he was living alone, like there was someone else in the house in the form of a song as long as he played.  Now, he got to play with Johnny, and it was even better.  He found such a thrill in both of them working together on something, even if it was just singing and playing along to silly parody songs or songs about countries they'd never been to.

 

Johnny made requests just to annoy Edgar – songs he knew got stuck in Edgar's head easily, songs Edgar hated, songs Edgar would rather dance to than play – and Edgar complied with all of them. When Edgar tried to put a ban on one particular song, Johnny would sing a cover version of it in another language, and on and on, through something like forty three of them.  It obviously delighted Johnny and he bounced through the songs with more energy than Edgar had seen from him in days, so it was hard to remain upset.

 

If it made Johnny happy, Edgar found he could put up with even the dumbest things.

 

“Play the credit union one, sing with me!”

 

And so Edgar played a song about an Australian credit union on his keyboard while he and Johnny tried to ooze the same level of sincerity of the original singer.

 

Edgar wasn't even completely sure what a credit union _was._

 

“ _'cause we've learned nothing if we haven't learned_

_to measure success in our own terms_

_Small, Local, Ethical and Cooperative to the Core”_

 

Johnny smiled so hard his tongue stuck out a bit between his teeth.

 

Somewhere in the middle of the chorus of a song in Romanian about love and linden trees, Edgar heard Devi yelling at the door.

 

“Hey, we're here you piece of shit! Open the door!”

 

Johnny continued singing, but with an exaggerated pout as he wandered over to the door.

 

Edgar heard Devi and Tenna come in, and the door close behind them, all while he and Johnny continued singing.  It took Tenna two lines to realize what they were singing and then she joined in too.

 

Devi stood at the foot of the stairs, pretending she wasn't enjoying herself while Johnny and Tenna crowded Edgar on his bench and scream-sang ' _numa numa numa iei'_ over his shoulders.

 

Jimmy arrived just as they finished the song, and Devi let him in. He wandered into the living room to see Johnny, Tenna, and Edgar laughing like hyenas.

 

It was the first time the others had been in Edgar's house.  Not that they'd been unwelcome – the opposite, even – but Johnny always seemed to need it to retreat, or the others were quick to return to their own houses, and Edgar had never found out the proper protocol for having a dinner party. It was possible they didn't trust the house, even if they'd come to trust Edgar, and it had taken a request from Johnny to bring them all here.

 

His house had never felt better.

 

“Sorry,” Edgar wheezed through a laugh, “you just missed a thing.”

 

Tenna picked up her head. “Aww, it's Jimmy. Can we do one with Jimmy?”

 

“That's why we _came_ ,” Devi said.

 

“Oh, I guess so! Okay, let's do that then.”

 

Devi rolled her eyes.

 

“I have some space in the back that I think will work better than the parking lot,” Edgar said. “I can show you where to set up.”

 

He led them through the living room and the kitchen. They'd all have to pass the basement door to get out the back, and his stomach didn't settle properly until everyone was outside and well beyond it.  He'd never sensed evil or strange from it in all his years here, but now, with all the secrets he was holding onto for Johnny, he felt it would somehow radiate deception at his friends.

 

Luckily, the backyard had yet to do anything supernatural but stay mowed. 

 

Jimmy crossed his arms over his chest and surveyed the long expanse of grass that flowed down to the bottom of a large hill.  The slab of concrete that had once been a small basketball court was Edgar's intended location for this little adventure. “Fuck. Someone spared no expense on you, huh?”

 

Tenna shoved Jimmy's shoulder. “And how lucky we are that he likes to share.”

 

Several extension cords and a few pointless arguments later, they were set up to play, and Johnny tried to have them do that rather than share any information, but Devi refused to so much as touch a drumstick until he told her something.

 

“We _agreed_ ,” she said.

 

“I wouldn't say that, exactly,” Johnny replied. “It was more like you told me to and I didn't strongly object.”

 

“That is enough. Now tell us what's going on.” She leaned to one side to catch Edgar's eye. “Edgar can feel free to chime in too, since he's just as guilty.”

 

Jimmy shot to attention. “What? You didn't say Edgar was out doing this too!”

 

Tenna stepped next to Jimmy and took his hand in both of hers, patting the back of it. “Hey, so okay, I want you to think real hard about this. What, if anything, have you seen them do _apart_ since they met?”

 

Jimmy frowned and a kind of panic filled his eyes.

 

“It's okay, sweetie, take your time.” Tenna patted his hand again, and then his shoulder, and took a seat beside him.

 

Devi rolled her eyes. “Aaaannyway... Nny?”

 

Johnny took a deep breath and looked at Edgar, but Edgar didn't know what he was looking for. Support? Clearance? A way out?

 

“The guy across the street can see us. Probably all of us.” He sighed and looked at the sky. “And there's another kid in the school who can, too.”

 

Devi put her hands on her hips, and some of Jimmy's visible panic melted as they listened to Johnny spill a large portion of the story he'd been hiding until that point. He told them about the key, and what Pepito said it was, and that it reacted to his name (he even showed them, much to Tenna's delight).

 

He left out anything about what he'd been remembering, and how it had been affecting him.

 

It wasn't total transparency, but it was progress.

 

At the end of Johnny's confession, Devi crossed her arms tightly over her chest and her upper lip twitched into a near snarl. “You piece of shit.”

 

“Fuck you,” Johnny shot back.

 

“And you!” Devi pointed at Edgar. “I trusted your ass to be half-decent!”

 

“It wasn't my stuff to tell!” Edgar defended.

 

Jimmy stood up. “He just said the basement and the book were yours!”

 

“They are! But they were still about him, and he didn't want to say! You guys would have done the same thing for him!”

 

“Like hell I would!” Devi screamed. “He's not magically exempt from decent communication because he thinks his brain is special!”

 

Johnny got entirely too close to Devi for Tenna's comfort and she tried to step between them. Johnny ignored her to keep yelling at Devi.

 

“This is why I didn't say anything! Edgar understood, and he found out half of it with me, or I wouldn't have told him either!”

 

Tenna put her arms between Devi and Johnny and forced them apart. She spoke far more calmly than Devi. “Why do we even bother caring about you, then, Nny? If all you're going to do is walk around hiding shit from us, why the fuck do we even keep you around?”

 

Johnny backed away, more from Tenna touching than him from the argument. “I don't fucking know. I didn't ask any of you to stay and put up with me.”

 

Meanwhile, Edgar knew how fond of them all Johnny was and couldn't stomach the idea of them actually leaving.  He positioned himself in front of Johnny. Tenna relaxed somewhat, and Jimmy took in a sharp breath. “Guys, guys, stop. Stop. Just stop screaming for a minute.”

 

“Thank you,” Tenna said. It was far less kind then her usual tone.

 

Jimmy leaned close to Johnny, who sneered at him. Jimmy didn't seem to mind. “I don't understand why he got to hear about all this and we _didn't_ ,” Jimmy spat. “How long have you known us, and you trust him with this stuff in the span of a few days?”

  
“I already told you; I had to. He was already involved.”

 

Devi, now considerably calmer, still stood with her arms crossed. “And why weren't we? What were you two doing when I saw you guys on that porch?”

 

“Finding most of this out,” Edgar said. “Dib - the kid in the school - gave us a camera to do it so if Pepito wiped our brains or killed us or something, there'd be a record.”

 

Tenna eased away from Devi now that things had calmed down. “Brain-wiping? Really? You _believe_ this?” She sounded a little disappointed in Edgar.

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “Really, Ten?”

 

“Seriously,” Edgar said. “This from the girl who makes us feed fortunes to a taxidermied wolverine?” Edgar adopted nearly the same annoyed posture as Johnny and then rushed to do something else with his hands to avoid weird comparisons. As far as he was aware, no one caught it.

 

Tenna frowned. “Hey, come on. That's fun, that's harmless. This shit doesn't sound harmless. If it's real, this shit could be heavy.”

 

“Can we all go talk to this Satan-y guy?” Jimmy asked.

 

Devi groaned. “Oh, god, you believe this too?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Why not? It's not any weirder than we are, really. And if Edgar gets to do it, we all should.”

 

“You believe it because Nny said it.” Devi poked Jimmy's shoulder and he reacted by snapping his teeth at her. On other people – or at least people on TV – this might have looked like more hostility, but with Jimmy and Devi, this actually signaled a relaxing. They might make it through this thing intact.

Edgar hoped they could steer things away from the fact that he and Johnny had concealed things. It was just a matter of time before they found out there was still more being hidden. “I don't know if talking to to him more is a good idea. He doesn't seem to like visitors much.”

 

Devi seemed to be on much the same track and adopted a fairly even tone. “Assuming this is even real, why give Nny the key to Hell? Was he specially chosen, or just convenient?”

 

“He chose me.” Johnny held the key between two fingers. “Because Squee recognized me.”

 

“Soooo, why aren't we crashing the party in Hell?” Tenna asked.

 

“Oh, yeah,” Edgar said. “Sign me up for Circle Five. I've been looking for an opportunity to have my limbs ripped off.”

 

“You and that realism, boy.”

 

“It's not the funny kind of Hell!” Johnny snapped. “It's not TV Hell that's filled with movie star demons who are misunderstood and pretty. This is full of actual shit that would fuck us up. We've been looking at television so long, we don't have any idea what would actually be horrifying.”

 

Edgar nodded, though he worried about how much of what Johnny said sounded like past experience. “Agreed. This is probably really dangerous shit.”

 

Jimmy scoffed and say down on the steps leading to Edgar's porch. “Jeez, _Mom,_ way to ruin all the fun.”

 

Edgar glared at him. “Hey, don't you start that too.”

 

Devi perked up. “ _Too_?”

 

Tenna grinned at her. “I call him that when he gets flustered in the van.  It's adorable.”

 

Devi rarely looked delighted, but here it was. Edgar just wished it wasn't at his expense. “That is fucking _hilarious_.”

 

“No, it isn't,” Edgar said pointedly.

 

“Oh, what are you going to do?” Devi teased. “Ground me?”

 

“Can we play now?” Johnny's voice was quieter than usual, and lacked the kind of demanding exasperation the others would have expected. He was actually asking permission.

 

Devi glanced rapidly between Edgar and the others. He knew she suspected the music was some sort of therapy, and he hoped she now assumed it was therapy for what she'd been told. If Johnny was going to have his secret memory attacks revealed by any means other than confession, Edgar suspected it would be Devi who would uncover them.

 

“Yeah, okay,” Devi said. She got up and collected her drum sticks. “No use fucking yelling at each other. We're stuck together anyway. What do you want to play?”

 

“Do something fun,” Tenna chirped. “I want to kazoo with you guys. It's good for the soul.”

 

Edgar felt pained even considering listening to more kazoo. “Why don't you play the cymbals or the triangle or something?”

 

“Pffft, you can't do a tune on the cymbals.”

 

“I would argue you can't on the kazoo, either.”

 

Johnny grinned and Edgar tried to tell his chest or stomach or whatever it was to stop making a mess of his insides.  Any time he made Johnny smile, regardless of context, Edgar kind of bubbled somewhere in the vicinity of his ribcage.

 

“We can do fun and kazoo,” Johnny said.  It was oddly gentle. “There's no need to take this too seriously.”

 

“Oh, oh, the one with the money,” Tenna enthused. “Million dollars.”

 

Johnny laughed. “I think we have too many instruments for that. And none of them are the right ones.”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Eh, we should get used to making covers in our own style or something, right?”

 

“I guess that makes sense,” Devi said. “This is a weird song to do this to, though.”

 

“You guys are making this too complicated.” There was the tiniest hint of whine in Johnny's voice. “Let's just sing or something? What do we need? Just some stuff we can make up with Edgar?”

 

Edgar looked at his keyboard and sighed. “Well, what we'd technically need is an accordion...”

 

“But you're going to sound the most like one.”

 

“Um, _kazoo_ ,” Tenna sang.

 

“Um, _no-o_ ,” Johnny echoed back. He looked to Edgar with a crooked smile. “Please?”

 

Johnny saying 'please' was perhaps Edgar's greatest weakness.

 

He shrugged and adjusted some settings to get the best approximate accordion sound. “Whatever you want.”

 

Jimmy silently and mockingly mouthed his words back to him. Edgar shrugged it off and began to play a heavily synthesized approximation of the opening of the song they'd all listened to in the choir room dozens of times. Despite mocking Edgar just seconds before, Jimmy's guitar came in to help at just the right moment and Devi kept them on track.

 

Johnny started in with “ _If I had a million dollars..._ ” and everyone in the group, even Devi, echoed it back to him.

 

He laughed, surprised, through the next line, “ _I would buy you a house.”_

 

Again, the others echoed him, though Tenna changed the words to ' _Asshole already ha-as a house.'_

 

She and Jimmy felt similarly about ' _buy you furniture for your house'. ('Steal the furniture in your house.')_

 

The literal words of the song didn't do a whole lot for them. They had several houses between them, even though they had no dollars at all, let alone a million. The spirit of the song struck them, however. The song was about what you'd do with a wild fantasy at its heart, and for Edgar and others, that fantasy was being visible, connecting with the world and even seeing some of it.

 

It was maybe more the others' fantasy that Edgar was willing to go along with. When he made brief eye-contact with Johnny as they all sang “ _I'd buy your loooove_ ”, his skin burned and he thought that if no one else ever saw him, he'd probably be okay with that.

 

Tenna and Johnny sang about making the tree fort and, for once, Jimmy did not try to jump in and do the accompanying dialog about pre-wrapped bacon.  Tenna happily flitted around Johnny; any trace of the girl who has asked why she should care about him was gone.

 

Their version of the song matched the original's casual and goofy joy, just with significantly more swearing and the occasional guitar riff.

 

“ _I'd buy you a fur coat,”_ Tenna sang as she twirled away from Johnny and leaned in close to Devi. They sang the next line, “ _But not a real fur coat, that's cruel”_ together.

 

Johnny drifted to Jimmy and they sang about exotic pets and the bones of a man with elephantitis, with the slight variation of _“All them fucking elephant bones.”_ Jimmy leaned hard on ' _I'd buy your love_ ', with half-lidded eyes and a sleazy grin.   Johnny responded with a smile that looked like a dare before turning away from him.  The interaction did uncomfortable things to Edgar's chest, but Jimmy had a satisfied smirk on his face.

 

Johnny infused the next part with more sincere emotion than the song was likely meant to have and sang to the sky for several lines, rather than to anyone in the group.  He sang through both parts of the song, even though the others continued to sing the back and forth 'million dollars' call backs.

 

 _“If I had a million dollars_  
_We wouldn't have to walk to the store_  
_If I had a million dollars_  
_We'd take a limousine, 'cause it costs more”_

 

 

_If I had a million dollars  
We wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner”_

 

The next part was Edgar's favorite, and he risked Jimmy's wrath by jumping in to sing it with Johnny.

 

“ _But we_ would _eat Kraft Dinner.”_

 

Johnny looked down from the sky and grinned. “ _Of course we would, we'd just eat more_.”

“We could buy really expensive Freezies to go with it.”

“Oh, yeah, only the fanciest – _ORGANIC Freezies._ ”

Edgar imagined it was only that Jimmy regarded playing music together as somewhat sacred and not to be ruined mid-song with drama that spared Edgar some kind of guitar-inflicted massive head wound.  The head wound, however, would have been worth watching Johnny grinning like nothing had ever bothered him, like he didn't have dead terrifying people in his head. There was nothing dramatic or romantic or significant about Johnny laugh-singing and changing the lyrics today – he'd done some variation on it countless times before – but today, watching Johnny's face while he sang about organic freezies clicked something into place in Edgar's chest and he was absolutely certain that he had to say something, no matter how ridiculous it was.

Tenna continued the song, “ _Well, I'd buy you a green dress_ ,” again aimed directly at Devi.  She added “ _But not a real green dress, that's cruel_ ” with a mocking twisted lip and Devi swatted at her.  She was just excited about buying Jimmy some art (“ _a Picasso or a Johnny C”_ even if that ruined the original pun).

 

Johnny startled as though he just realized where he was and then rushed to Tenna to sing the last part of the song with her.

 

_“If I had a million dollars_

_If I had a million dollars_

_Well I'd buy you a monkey_

_Haven't you always wanted a monkey?”_

 

He grabbed Tenna's hands and she gasped so hard she nearly lost the last few lines of the song as Johnny twirled them around.

 

“ _If I had a million dollars,_

_I'd buy your lo~ove”_

 

Whatever back and forth calls were supposed to be happening here at the end of the song were lost, with the group just jubilantly shouting both parts of the song.

 

_"If I had a million do~oo~llars~"_

 

And then, at nearly the last line, Johnny released Tenna's hands and sent her stumbling toward Devi. Johnny himself stopped just short of crashing into Edgar's keyboard and sang the last three words staring over the keys at him.

 

“ _I'd be rich!”_

 

Edgar smiled so much his cheeks hurt. He would tell him. He _had_ to tell him, or he was certain he'd go a bit mad.

 

The others, thankfully, were laughing and smiling too. Perhaps, if they were lucky, all the lying by omission had been forgiven.

 

“Can you imagine this for real though?” Tenna panted a bit after her bout of twirling. “Everyone could see us and we could go swimming in piles of gold like that cartoon duck.”

 

“I'd just buy the pool in the park,” Johnny said. He turned toward Tenna with his shoulders first, but his gaze lingered on Edgar a bit longer. “And then I'd make them keep it open all year round. They'd have to heat it for me in the winter.”

 

“Oh, wow, yeah,” Edgar said. “I've always wondered what the deal was with hot tubs.”

 

“Right? I wanna know why it's apparently so much better than just a bath.”

 

“Baths aren't even that great,” Tenna grumbled. “I feel like it must be the size of the tub. Or the bubbles.”

 

Johnny rocked on his heels and entered full fantasy mode, dreamy tone in his voice, distant look in his eyes. “We could go to a mall,” he said. “A real movie theater.  Or find somewhere with a roller coaster.”

 

Edgar grinned. “You could scare all the people in the haunted house.”

 

Johnny held his hands up and wiggled his fingers. “Beware the ungendered teenager who can open Hell! He likes CDs, Freezies, and macaroni!”

 

“I still think we should try that,” Tenna said.

 

Devi yawned. “Good luck getting it from Nny so you can try it.”

 

Edgar shook his head thoughtfully. “I feel like to be _safe_ we should really --”

 

Tenna groaned. “Stop, Mom.”

 

“I was going to say 'find someone to throw down ahead of us.'”

 

Johnny lit up, grinned , and opened his mouth, but Edgar didn't hear his voice, only a snippet of a song.

 

“ _when I was twelve_

_I sold my soul”_

 

Johnny blinked. “What? What's wrong?”

 

“I just heard--”

 

“ _You suck, Edgar!”_ Jimmy screeched.

 

Tenna jumped and looked around. “What? What the fuck?”

 

Jimmy did not bother answering her. “You think – you just think / _to Lucifer/_ fucking / _for a sack of coal/_ but you're not!”

 

“I don't _what_?” Edgar had really hoped he was hearing Johnny's song. The way Johnny had been grinning and happy, it seemed to make sense. But instead, it was clearly Jimmy. Edgar had heard Devi and Tenna's songs when they were excited or happy about something he was doing with them, and now here was Jimmy's song, manifesting not through some shared connection to _each other_ but, presumably, their shared connection with _Johnny._

 

“You think you're fucking _special_ and / _never been hot enough/,_ okay?!”

 

Edgar winced as the song began to drown out not only Jimmy's speech, but Edgar's own thoughts.  Johnny stepped between them, and Edgar had enough thought of his own left to be a little touched that Johnny was trying to defend him.

 

“Jimmy, fucking calm down! He's never heard it before, you can't do that to him!”

 

“You hit me with all sorts of / _never been hot enough/_ hurt by a _song_.”

 

“He's not used to these!” Johnny yelled back. “And he hasn't fucking done anything to you!”

 

“You / _Beezelbub says to me/_ can't control this stuff! Oh, wait, maybe you _don't!”_

 

_“I will fucking tear your arms off, you say that again.”_

 

There was a throbbing in Edgar's head that had not accompanied the other songs, and he suspected it was not being helped by the shouting match. He squeezed his eyes closed and the next thing he heard was a scuffle of boots over concrete and Devi and Tenna yelling.

 

The song ceased its hold on Edgar and when he looked up, Johnny had Jimmy pinned to the ground and was trying to claw his face off.

 

He scrambled over to them, trying to press on the side of his head at the same time. “Nny, holy shit, _stop!_ ”

 

Devi had her arms around Johnny's ribcage, and Tenna was trying to shield Jimmy's face.

 

Jimmy and Johnny, for the most part, seemed unaware that the girls were there and kept right on screaming at each other.

 

Edgar pushed himself in front of Devi to join her in holding Johnny back. He expected to be met with frenzied resistance, but Johnny stopped thrashing and jumped the second he saw Edgar.

 

Tenna dragged a panting Jimmy by his armpits out from under Johnny.

 

Johnny stood up, regarded the scene around him as though he were hollow, took one step backwards, and then bolted into the house.

 

The first instinct Edgar had was to run after him, but Devi grabbed his elbow and jerked him backwards. “What the fuck did you _do?”_

 

He didn't know which part she was asking about, but it didn't matter. The answer was the same. “I don't know.”

 

“Can you function okay with Jimmy in your head now?”

 

Edgar nodded. “I'll live. I need to go check on Nny.”

 

“I'm coming with you.”

 

Edgar held his hands out and she glared at him. “I _really_ think I should go alone.”

 

“You're hiding more shit, aren't you?”

 

_Yes, absolutely, and it's terrifying._

 

“No. He just lives with me so I'm kind of used to handling bursts of anger. I thought could talk him down without setting him off again.  You check to see if Jimmy is broken and come get me if he needs bandages or ice packs or something.”

 

Devi narrowed her eyes, clearly – and justifiably – thought every word was bullshit, but did not push the issue. “Okay, _Mom._ ”

 

'Mom' was a small price to pay for this.

 

 

Once inside, Edgar wandered cautiously into the kitchen. “Nny? It's just me.”

 

There was no answer, but nearly a year of staying within the same walls as Johnny had given Edgar some advantages. He knew Johnny's preferred places to sit, and he was especially tuned to the sound of Johnny's key ring.

 

The sound was easily traced to the stairs in the living room.

 

Johnny jumped when Edgar turned the corner and nearly fled up the stairs like a panicked cat.

 

“It's okay, it's okay!” Edgar lowered his voice and approached slowly. “It's just me.”

 

Johnny relaxed and perched on a step half-way up the staircase like a gargoyle, still breathing hard and back lit by the window on the second floor.

 

“What happened?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny shook his head and then pressed his face into his arms, which were resting across his knees.

 

There were flashes in Edgar's mind of doing this before, of approaching with caution and doing what he could just by gaining permission to be in closer proximity. “Can I come up?”

 

Johnny nodded against his arms, and Edgar stepped slowly and deliberately, making sure Johnny would hear every step. He sat down one step below Johnny and tried to emphatically exist at him. It was difficult to know what to say to him. It would have been difficult to know what to say to _any_ version of Johnny. Whatever he said, it would have to be quick if they were going to be able to lie to the others convincingly that Johnny had just suffered some tiny injury rather than a flashback in his head.

 

“I'm okay,” Edgar told him, for lack of anything else to say. “From Jimmy, I mean. It was just more powerful than I was ready for. I thought --”

 

He stopped himself before saying 'I thought it was going to be yours.' Devi had warned him not to mention it, and it was likely that Jimmy had just been pummeled to the pavement for making a comment on the topic.

 

“I remembered him,” Johnny said.

 

“Jimmy?”

 

“I remembered seeing him like that before. On his back, with me attacking him from above like that. When you showed up, I realized it wasn't real – or, at least I realized it wasn't happening right then – and it just turned off. It felt like waking up, like flicking a light switch.”

 

Edgar let out a long breath. Johnny had mentioned Devi hating him for some reason in his other lifetimes, but he hadn't said a lot about Jimmy except that his devotion to Johnny was more or less intact from life to life. It had probably been naïve of Edgar to think that everyone had been friends.

 

“You said Devi hated you, and you remember attacking Jimmy...”

 

“ _I know._ ” Johnny moaned. “I didn't like them or they didn't like me, and I probably – What if did something to _you_ too?”

 

His heart sped up.  “Why am _I_ different?”

 

Johnny picked his head up and just looked at Edgar. His eyes were a bit red, the skin around them puffy and shiny. Edgar took a sharp breath, though he tried not to. As many times as he thought he'd see Johnny cry, it hadn't happened. Here, there was some solid evidence that he had been.

 

“We were _friends,”_ Johnny whined pathetically _._ “If I did something to you, too, then...” Johnny's shoulders slumped forward. “Then maybe I will again.”

 

“Do you _want_ to do something horrible to me?”

 

“Of fucking course not, I'm not that much of a dick.”

 

“Then I really don't think you will.”

 

Johnny gazed down the steps and began fiddling with the key on his neck. “What makes you so sure of that?”

 

Edgar shrugged and relaxed against the step. “I think you're stronger than the guys in your head. Currently, even with their memories, there's more of you than there is of them.”

 

“And when they start to outnumber me?”

 

“I still think you're stronger.”

 

“You don't really have any reason to believe that.”

 

“I guess not. But I still do. You're the only physical one, and you have real physical people to back you up.” He slid down one step and braced himself against the wall until he could stand. “Are you okay?”

 

“For now.”

 

“You should come back out, they're going to wonder soon.”

 

“I don't want to see them.”

 

“Unless Jimmy has a concussion, I don't think we have a reason to make them leave. Just come sing with us for a while.”

 

Edgar held out his hand. Surprisingly, Johnny actually took it and let himself be pulled to his feet.

 

Devi rounded the corner just then and peered up at them from the bottom of the stairs.

 

“How long have you been in here holding hands while Tenna and I are stuck outside with Jimmy?”

 

It was something of a relief that the crux of her annoyance was not the alleged hand holding, but that she'd been left to deal with Jimmy and Tenna alone. If this ever _became_ proper hand holding, maybe Devi would have run out of energy to devote to protesting it by the time it happened.

 

“We're coming,” Edgar said. “Just needed to make sure he was okay.”

 

She smiled and tapped her foot. “And?”

 

“I'm not,” Johnny said, grinning. “But I can pretend _disturbingly_ well.”

 

His comment had its intended effect, as Devi's mouth twitched while she tried to decide whether to laugh. Even Edgar wasn't completely sure if Johnny was making a joke.

 

Johnny released Edgar's hand and strolled down the stairs with such bounce that Edgar would never have guessed something was wrong.

 

From the bottom of the stairs, Johnny beckoned for Edgar to follow. “Come on, Edgar, we've got some shit to do.”

 

Devi's eyebrows scrunched toward the center of her forehead and she appeared caught between a smile and biting her lip and Edgar felt her discomfort in his gut.

 

“Devi!” Tenna's voice echoed from the kitchen. “Jimmy thinks we should get ice cream!”

 

“No, he doesn't, you're projecting your own shit onto him.”

 

“Devi!” Jimmy's voice piped up. “Jimmy thinks he needs ice cream to recover from his trauma!”

 

Johnny grinned. It was a little lopsided, like he just didn't have enough energy for both sides of his face, but it was adorable.

 

_Why not?_

 

“Devi!” Edgar called from a few steps up. “I have explicit past-life knowledge that Jimmy and Nny will not recover from this heavily charged incident until we find some ice cream!”

 

Devi spread her arms wide in frustration. “Why is this on _me? Edgar_ is Mom, ask _him_ to find you ice cream!”

 

Tenna and Jimmy rounded the corner, all grins and and playful poking. Jimmy had some scrapes on his arms, there was a tear in the shoulder seam of his shirt, and he had a large scratch on his face that was already a little puffed up, but he didn't seem to notice or care.

 

Johnny clasped his hands together and held them up against his cheek as he smiled over his shoulder at Devi. There may have been the batting of eyelashes. “Devi...?”

 

“Stop asking me! Go get some fucking ice cream if you don't want to play anymore! It's your weird ass therapy, not mine! Just don't bitch at me that we set up everything for one fucking song.”

 

Tenna shoved Jimmy forward, who collided into Devi, who flailed and tried to latch onto Johnny. Edgar jumped down from his step, but wasn't needed. Tenna had kept them all on their feet and began herding them all out the front door with one bracing arm.

 

Edgar didn't know whether Tenna knew about Johnny, but as they left the house to take the trip across town for some out-of-season ice cream, he'd rarely seen Johnny look so grateful.

 

They had to steal the ice cream in cartons from a slightly grimy grocery store. It was still too early for most proper ice cream places to be open, and even if they were, Edgar and the others weren't visible enough to go to a window and order, unless they had Tenna order five cones for herself.

 

Tenna informed them she was not above that, should they want to try it come June.

 

The selection wasn't much, but they each managed to walk out with a different flavor. Edgar was sincerely surprised when Jimmy chose plain vanilla without the slightest hesitation. Johnny made Edgar retrieve his carton for him under the guise of needing something else on the other side of the store. In reality, he was avoiding seeing (and letting the others see) even the faint reflections provided by the glass doors in the frozen food section.

 

Edgar pretended he didn't notice.

 

As he sat with the others in the parking lot post-acquisition of ice cream, Edgar had difficulty focusing on eating any. Tenna had brought spoons from his kitchen and everyone, even Johnny, was in a good mood. The others were smiling, laughing, joking, and singing bits of songs at each other.

 

Tenna's song played through the others' and Edgar was surprised to find they didn't sound completely discordant.

 

“ _Excuse me_

_I don't believe we've met before_

_but it doesn't matter--”_

 

“ _you and the guitar and I_

_make three”_

 

“ _My finger's on her lips_

_we were laughing--”_

 

“ _Cry ‘blasphemy’, cry ‘fuck you’_

_But don’t bother to change_

_Because it’s all a work in progress, dear_

_And we’re all bound to be a little strange.”_

 

They could make new stories or enhance each others' songs, and Edgar liked all of them. He liked the words, he liked the melodies, even if they were all different styles. He wondered about the songs every time he heard one. Wondered whether they were an expression of what was deepest in a person, wondered if they were just what the person most wanted, wondered what made them first happen, wondered why it was only this group who had them, he wondered if his opinion of someone's song was a reflection of his opinion of _them._ Would he like Johnny's song better than anyone else's?

 

Mostly, though, he just wondered where his and Johnny's _were._ What was he missing that he hadn't heard anything of his own song and he was going to be seventeen in less than a month? Had he not done enough weird introspection? And why not _Johnny's?_ Edgar spent so much time with Johnny, knew him better than he knew the others, would have bet things he did not have that Johnny would have been _first_.

 

Tenna had told him Johnny was the most sensitive to the songs, so he was likely hearing these songs weaving new creations even more strongly than Edgar, and with the addition of his own song. A year ago, Edgar hadn't known to be frustrated that he couldn't hear supernatural songs radiating from people's souls, and now he was half-heartedly stabbing a carton of raspberry chocolate chip ice cream in a parking lot, worrying about songs in his brain instead of having fun with the actual friends he never thought he'd have.

 

“Mom,” Tenna said, her mouth full of peanut butter and fudge, “that shit is going to leak right out of the box and into your jeans if you don't get a move on.”

 

“My name is not Mom.” It was an automatic response, and the nickname was not worth offering more protest than that. Edgar stabbed the block of ice cream a little harder. “I guess I'm not feeling this flavor as much as I thought I was. That, and I keep thinking of how much of this I'll end up throwing up later.”

 

“You need help with it?” Jimmy asked. Vanilla ice cream dripped over his lip and splattered on his knee. He rubbed it off, or possibly _in,_ with his thumb.

 

Johnny laughed at him. “You look like you need help with your own.”

 

Jimmy grinned and leaned toward Johnny, licking his lip suggestively. “You're welcome to assist me.”

 

“I will beat you to death with your own spoon, you do that again.”

 

Devi made an angry growl. “Can we not with the beating Jimmy to death today? That's why we're even eating this shit.”

 

“If anyone could murder someone with a spoon, though,” Tenna said, “it's Nny.”

 

Johnny fluttered his eyelashes at her. “Aww, Ten.”

 

He looked fine, he looked like he'd never been traumatized by feeling blood on his hands or having the key to Hell sealed to his neck.

 

Was it because Johnny was always pretending that Edgar couldn't hear the song? Was Johnny just _never_ genuine with him the way Devi and the others had been when Edgar heard them? Was it not some kind of fault with Edgar, but with Johnny? He wanted to jump up with the thrill of a plausible new theory, but there was also a sort of knot in his stomach that he wasn't sure he could attribute to half a carton of ice cream.

 

He thought he knew Johnny, but if Johnny had always been pretending... It was possible Edgar had resolved to confess a crush on someone who wasn't real.

 

Jimmy somehow ate all the ice cream that the others couldn't finish, and on their way out of the parking lot, Tenna put everyone's spoon in Edgar's back pocket.

 

The whole way home, all he could think was that everyone he knew had indirectly licked the inside of his pocket.

 

 

 

Edgar thought he'd be ready to settle in for the night with a horrible old movie after everyone packed up their things (and then promptly left them in Edgar's garage). He'd hoped to get Johnny to watch, or at least sit in proximity and draw while Edgar watched. Johnny, however, was rooted to the top of the stairs, staring out the hall window.

 

“Nny?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What do you need?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “To function?”

 

“You already do.”

 

“But shittily.”

 

He was going to take a few risks in one here, but...

 

“Do you think the roof would help?”

 

Johnny was quiet for a few seconds. “I might as well set up a fucking tent up there.”

 

“Come on. I'll go with you.” He took one step up and held out his hand.

 

Johnny turned from the window and started down the stairs. “Of course you will.”

 

The thing was, Johnny _thrived_ on the roof. If nothing else, Edgar could get him to recharge up there. He lasted longer between weird attacks of his own head if he had been on the roof recently, and he recovered more quickly from them too. On the entirely selfish side, Edgar just liked being up there with him. When Johnny was done struggling, he would tell stories and come to life properly and it was like the first few months back in Edgar's house when they were doing nothing but enjoying being. Edgar liked him best at those times.

 

Previous versions of Edgar did not like Johnny this way. Edgar could compartmentalize them as though these other two people were still alive and just living in his head like supernatural tenants. Their opinions remained as distinct as though they were seeing the situation live from their perches in Heaven or... wherever. His first self, the scary one, was actively horrified by current Edgar's feelings. The second one, the one who had asked to help and caused all this in the first place, seemed to experience some real pain anytime Johnny's smile made Edgar smile too much in return, but it was not entirely revulsion. It was complicated, like nearly everything else he'd gotten himself into in the last year.

 

He'd known it would be a problem when it started, though he didn't even know specifically why and, more often, his happiness at spending time with Johnny drowned out any anxiety the others might have been passing on to him. He'd 'fought' with Tenna and Devi about it being a bad idea, and while he asked them for real concrete reasons, his other selves let him know that association with Johnny hadn't gone well for them in the past. There were no solid reasons, no 'Johnny will hurt you,' or 'Johnny hurt us', or proclamations of Johnny being a liar or a vampire or something. Just a vague feeling of something being unpleasant, being Wrong. Always complicated.

 

Meanwhile, throwing garbage and rocks at Pepito's house from the roof and drawing on the concrete with black marker while Johnny sang songs felt utterly not vague, very pleasant, and extremely Right. Even if it was also complicated.

 

“Everything feels better up here,” Johnny sighed.

 

“Agreed.”

 

“I'm glad no one else comes up here.”

 

“Should we start stockpiling some blood to throw around to keep it that way?”

 

Johnny braced himself on the ledge with his elbows. “Are you volunteering?”

 

“Yes. But I'm volunteering everyone else too.”

 

Johnny laughed a little and flicked a stone off the ledge. “That would work, but...”

 

“But you don't want the others up here.” It was quick, and he almost hadn't said it, but his gut had been quicker than his sense.

 

Johnny looked up at Edgar, eyes wide at first, then narrowing into a smile. “Yeah.”

 

“So it'll have to be just us.”

 

The streetlamps glowed more brightly, highlighting Johnny's smile even more. The glow from Pepito's house grew with them.

 

“That'd be okay with me,” Johnny said. He reached down and pulled the knife from his pocket. “Do you need to start now?”

 

“Only if you do.”

 

“Deal.” Johnny showed no hesitation at all and cut the usual spot on his head. He thrust the blade at Edgar, who took it with some caution. Johnny tugged off one of his gloves – the one without bandages underneath - and Edgar watched him press around the cut to make it bleed more.

 

Making his own cut still wasn't easy, and he couldn't do it with the same nonchalant attitude as Johnny, but it was easier this time.

 

_Johnny has turned me into the kind of person who volunteers to bleed._

 

Johnny looked at his hand, now with a smear of blood on it, and then blinked up at Edgar. He stared into Edgar's eyes enough that it was a little uncomfortable.

 

“Since the other day... This is the first time my hand has felt normal,” he said.

 

Edgar broke the stare and pressed his fingers around his own cut. The blood was warm and almost tickled when it flowed between his finger tips. He held his hand up next to Johnny's.

 

“And now we're the same again.”

 

Johnny went right on staring. “You really _aren't_ going anywhere, are you?”

 

“I didn't know you expected me to, but no.”

 

Johnny smiled, and finally looked away. His gaze fell on the door to the roof behind Edgar. He walked over slowly and pressed his hand to the top of the door frame. Edgar followed him and did the same.

 

“Maybe the angel of death will skip us?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny pulled his glove back on. “Except I think that needs to be a sheep or a lamb or something. Innocence and all that shit. I know that's not me, and I have some municipal pool keys on my ring that say that's not you either.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “If not angel of death, maybe just school administration.”

 

“Maybe it'll keep Pepito away,” Johnny joked. “Though, now that I think about it, this is probably going to call more attention to this place than not.”

 

“Oh.” Edgar frowned and looked at his palm with all the sticky, drying blood and tiny bits of grit and dirt lingering in the tiny lines on his hand. “Should we do something with it?”

 

“Nah. I like it better this way. It says it belongs to us, no matter who fucking sees it.”

 

There was a tight twisting in Edgar's chest.

 

_This, this could be the time to do this. He's in a good mood, we just shared something meaningful, he said 'us', it's just like TV enough that it's a reasonable time to try._

 

He'd spent enough time with the others by now to know that the world didn't operate the way it did on TV, and it wouldn't operate that way even if he were visible.

 

_But TV has to be based on something, right?_

 

It was there for people to relate to so that it could entertain so that it could make money. It wouldn't make money if _something_ about it wasn't true.

 

It was thus not unreasonable, Edgar thought, to think that standing together on a roof under the stars and trying to ensure they were the only ones who had it was a little bit weirdly romantic, even if it had involved blood and vandalism. It was especially so if he considered it along side Johnny's peculiar permissiveness with regard to Edgar and touch, the sideways glances, defensive reactions to proximity, and that he'd been living in Edgar's house for nearly a year now. He can't have just been hoping he was seeing all that, right?

 

Figuring out how to ask about this was difficult, and though he rehearsed it in his head over and over, it still stalled a bit when he finally built up the resolve to speak.

 

“So...”

 

Johnny flicked another pebble off the rooftop, casual, comfortable, not expecting this at all. “So what?”

 

Edgar took a deep breath and tried to say everything at once. “So, forgive me if I'm getting the wrong idea here – and I think you'd see it was a reasonable idea from my perspective, if you'd let me explain it to you, because even without TV, I think it becomes kind of an obvious conclusion to make. Not that I'm accusing you of being _obvious,_ but just generically, as a situation, it seems like it's-”

 

“You're... _babbling.”_ There was no accusation or contempt, it was just a bewildered statement of fact.

 

Now hyper-aware of the babble, Edgar couldn't seem to get any words out and stood silently feeling embarrassed several times over. Johnny evidently sensed Edgar's unease and stepped back to look him up and down, as though he expected to see some sort of outward sign of what Edgar had been trying to convey.

 

“What wrong idea?” Johnny prompted.

 

“I just...” It was amazing how foolish it felt to be daring to name Johnny's feelings. “I've been getting the impression that you might feel the same way I do.”

 

“Ah.” Johnny nodded and looked back out across the town, suddenly shut off. The lights below seemed to intensify yet again.

 

_Should they really be that bright?_

 

Edgar looked pleadingly at him, but Johnny said nothing else and made no further acknowledgment. Edgar grasped desperately at his words, trying to make himself clear, trying to hold onto what might be his only shot to explain this.

 

“Meaning, I got kind of a vibe that you... felt about me the way I feel about you.”

 

He wanted to take it back the moment he said it.

 

Johnny curled his fingers into his palm against the roof wall. His gaze was fixed on some trees beyond Pepito's house. “And how _do_ you feel?”

 

“I- I really like you.”

 

“Everyone does.”

 

“I mean in a … Tenna as relates to Devi kind of way.”

 

Johnny blinked, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “I see.”

 

Edgar's throat felt so dry he coughed before he was able to speak again. “So, do you...? Because, I felt like all the times you --”

 

“Yes.”

 

In that second, Edgar imagined he could have flown off the roof if someone had asked him to.

 

“You – _really?”_ He took a step closer, smiling broadly, his heart trying to turn him inside out, but Johnny backed away from him with arms folded protectively over his torso, his hands gripping his own elbows.

 

“Don't.”

 

Edgar stopped abruptly. Had he misunderstood? “Sorry? I'm not – I...”

 

“Yes,” Johnny said again, “but it doesn't matter.”

 

Edgar blinked and stepped back away from him. “What? Why not?”

 

“I don't want to do anything with it. Just let it go.”

 

He'd never experienced it before, but Edgar could have bet lots of money he did not have that this was what feeling heartbroken was like.

 

“So, I like _you_ , and you like _me,_ and we just... do nothing?”

 

Johnny's hands slid up his arms like he was suddenly cold. “You always did catch on quickly,” he said bitterly.

 

“But, I – _why_? Did I do something? Did I _not_ do something? Is there something I _should_ do?”

 

“No, no, no, just _stop_ , it's -” He took a steadying breath and looked up into the stars. “It's not you. There's... there's _nothing_ wrong with you.”

 

Edgar bit his lip. “And I can't do anything?” He spoke quietly, trying not to upset Johnny any more.

 

Johnny hunched his shoulders and squeezed his eyes closed. “Please stop, Edgar.”

 

“I-” Any word he could think to try after that died in his throat, felt foolish, or both. He should have been delighted and instead he was a little sick. Finally, he managed, “Okay.”

 

Johnny shuddered. “Thanks.”

 

Edgar's palm stuck to itself. He resented that he'd bled for any of this at all and hated that he felt that way. It wasn't like Johnny was obligated, and it wasn't really like him to make sense. Edgar would just have to...

 

Nothing.

 

' _We're the only people in the world, Edgar.'_

 

So it was likely he'd blown this whole 'feelings' business out of proportion anyway. Just excited that someone existed, so he was latching onto the first person who had connected with him in any meaningful way like some sort of dazed duckling?

 

He'd argued this with himself before, and he was even less convincing now.

 

Johnny threw a rock, there was a clink, and then an airy explosion.

 

In total darkness, the gravel on the roof dug into Edgar's knees when he ducked for cover, and his forehead cracked against Johnny's.

 

They were still breathing.

 

“Holy shit, what the fuck happened?” Edgar groped around in front of him until he brushed Johnny's fingers. Just to know he was still there. He pulled away quickly. It could easily have been a blind accident and Johnny wouldn't have questioned it, though Edgar felt guilty about it immediately. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

 

“I'm good, I'm good.”

 

“What hap--”

 

“I think I hit the streetlamp.”

 

“Should they really _explode_?”

 

“Probably when they share an electrical grid with Pepito.”

 

Edgar heard a grinding scuffle and the clatter of keys as his eyes began to adjust and he saw a tiny hint of Johnny as he stood up.

 

“Oh, wow.” Johnny sighed with a kind of awe in his voice.

 

“What?”

 

When Edgar stood to join him, he looked out over the town and saw nothing. No windows, no porches, no televisions, no flickering on the horizon. Nothing. Far in the distance, the silhouettes of the trees just barely stood out against the stars.

 

“It's just black,” Johnny said. “Look at it. We sleep in this every night and we have no idea, because of those lights.”

 

Edgar flexed his fingers, but it almost felt as though they didn't respond. “I can't see my own hands.”

 

“People used to think night was something you could get inside of you.”

 

Without the light, there was a real feeling that something tangible had taken its place. The dark was heavier and denser than Edgar had ever known it to be.

 

“I think I can understand why.”

 

“God, the stars, they're going to be amazing if the lights stay off long enough. Our eyes will adjust, and we'll see things we probably never have.”

 

“We might as well wait it out.”

 

There was more shuffling, and a ton of gravel being swept away.

 

“Nny, what are you doing?”

 

“Clearing a space.”

 

“Are you going to lie down on this?”

 

“Do you sleep standing up? Is this some weird loner kid habit I didn't know you had?”

 

_“Sleeping?”_

 

“Have you ever slept on a roof?”

 

“No, I can't say I have.”

 

“Good, neither have I. It'll be an adventure. Character building kinda shit. Come on.”

 

Edgar dropped carefully to his knees and then sat.

 

Johnny laughed a little. That was nice to hear, even if it stung a bit. “The whole way, what is wrong with you? You can't look at stars while _sitting_ up here.”

 

The second after Edgar put his head down on the area that had been freshly cleared of rocks, Johnny put his head down too, but he chose Edgar's stomach for the job instead of the hard 'floor' of the roof.

 

Edgar inhaled sharply.

 

_How do I interpret this? Why would someone even do this after that conversation? Does Nny know I only have television to go on and is intentionally fucking with my head over this? To punish me? Reassure me? Do friends do this? Are we even still friends?_

 

“Do you hear anything, Edgar?”

 

Edgar swallowed, but aside from his heart slamming against his chest and the blood surging through his ears, “Nothing.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

Edgar felt it in his stomach.

 

“What are we-?”

 

“I remember thinking that it would be best to die under the stars.”

 

The sky above grew more and more complex as Edgar's eyes adjusted to the dark. For the first time, he saw the band across the sky he saw so often pictured in photography and nature magazines.

 

“In this life, or a previous one?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

Johnny said nothing more, and when several minutes passed, Edgar tried to check on him.

 

“Nny?”

 

But somehow, Johnny was sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, yeah, wow. Almost none of this happened in the original, or at least not this way. 
> 
> The big stuff is that the relationship between Edgar and Johnny is definitely happening a different way than it did in the original. Most of this is due to me letting Johnny be more human this time around, but Edgar is just as responsible. He's stronger this time, so he can outright confess, and much earlier. I wanted this very much, as much as I liked the 'we're stage dating' whatever that you'd call the original SWAN, it felt fairer to these two versions of the characters who were developing ridiculous fondness for each other without effort on my part to just let them do what they wanted. This actually also adds a really painful dramatic element later that I hope you'll all enjoy, so I'm not all benevolence in my motivations! I am looking forward to you guys seeing how they eventually figure their shit out, though. 
> 
> We get to see the actual 'You suck, Edgar!' incident in this version, instead of just hearing a recording of it like the original. It always amused me that so many people reported that that scene made them laugh when we never even saw it. This version didn't turn out so funny as it happened, but maybe this crew will find it funny in retrospect too. 
> 
> I kept Johnny and Edgar sleeping on the roof, because I love everything with them and the roof, though the situation around why they did this is different and makes more sense here than it did the first time around. The first time, I think I just imagined the scenario and crammed it in, because that was how I rolled at the time. This one is actually kind of weird and tense and I like the idea of that much more. 
> 
> Devi actually sees Pepito and Todd gets to be more involved with all this shit and actually voice some objections. Todd and Tenna were both pretty poorly served by the original, and while I don't think Todd will get as much of a total glorious come back as Tenna (... or even Dib. oops), I still think he'll be better enveloped in this whole thing than he first was, poor dude.
> 
> Also lots of little stuff in this one, most of it song-related, but also several mentions of Star Trek in various forms, because I adore it so and I liked that it would be something Edgar liked too. You aren't done seeing them talk about Star Trek, I'm afraid, but it should be fun whether you've seen any version of the show or not.
> 
> Mention of Edgar vetoing a song and then Johnny singing it in 43 other languages are inspired by my international Disney song collection, but in this particular instance, it was 'Let It Go' which I drew pictures of back when I started this project.
> 
> Jimmy's song is in this one! It's called 'Never Been Hot Enough' and was written by my ex, who gave permission for it to be used in the original and everything connected to it. I admittedly did not contact her to confirm that something she made ten years ago could be used in a fun project revamp to make me happy, so take that for what it's worth, but if you want more info on the song, previous versions of SWAN and my website should have what you're looking for.
> 
> The Maleny Credit Union Song by Tommy Leonard was linked to me originally way back in 2008 or so by PolyesterRage, while I was doing ISH, and I just thought it was the best thing ever. It's catchy and kind of ridiculous and it's constantly walking a line between a complete joke and a man who was very passionate about a credit union. I sing it at my family all the time, and they're all pretty pissed that they know a song about a credit union from another continent. 
> 
> I always wanted to work it into ISH, but it had become so serious by the time I had the song, that it didn't work. There is so much more joy in reSWAN, so now here it is~
> 
> In that same section, they listen to O-Zone's Dragostea Din Tei. ;) There is a drawing of this somewhere, but I think it's them in the choir room.
> 
> The main song for this one is "If I Had A Million Dollars" by the Bare Naked Ladies, which I always loved the idea of them all singing together, but didn't get to work into the original SWAN In the way I wanted. I crammed it in elsewhere in the original and that's no fun, so now it has a proper usage. I also drew several pictures of Johnny and Edgar singing bits of this one.
> 
> I hope people still enjoy seeing this! I know this bit took a little while - I had a lot of large life events go down between this one and the last one -- but I hope it's worth it. Please forgive minor mistakes and mistypes, as usual. This is all just going up under my own solo effort for my own joy first, so it's not been picked at by anyone else. I still always hope you guys like it, though~ 
> 
> And next time we're doing Johnny POV, hooray~


	14. This is happening for your pleasure, at your leisure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepito issues his warnings and Johnny is haunted by visions of blood while Edgar tries to remain unafraid.

Johnny woke when the slowly strengthening sunshine on his face was suddenly interrupted by a cold shadow. He turned his head and Edgar's ribs reminded him of where he'd gone to sleep. When he opened his eyes he looked up into Pepito's silhouette, mostly black against the morning sun.

 

“Holy fuck!” Johnny shot up to a sitting position next to Edgar and grabbed his shoulders to shake him awake, but Edgar did nothing but breathe deeply.

 

“He'll sleep through this,” Pepito said dully.

 

“I'll tell him everything you say anyway,” Johnny spat.

 

“As you should, amigo, as you should. He's just stuck here to keep you from running.”

 

Apparently, Pepito had the idea that Johnny wouldn't abandon a totally helpless Edgar to deal with the spawn of Hell.

 

He was probably right.

 

“I'm not your friend,” Johnny said, addressing the least of what Pepito had said.

 

Pepito shrugged. “That's up to you. I don't particularly care either way.”

 

“What do you want?”

 

“I'm here to tell you that I need you not to do this.” He waved his hand in a circle indicating Johnny and the still-sleeping Edgar.

 

“You control the roof now?”

 

“Oh, don't be difficult. You know what I mean.”

 

Johnny looked at Edgar, lying there, oblivious. This was a terrible idea, even without Pepito's input. He'd made Edgar stay up there with him on a whim, stuck briefly in the control of some screaming grain of panic in the back of his head that was trying to react properly to 'Edgar likes me and I like Edgar.' It'd been foolish to admit he felt something at all, he'd just wanted to be not fucked up and doomed for five seconds and then he'd thought he could make it better and now here he was with this ache in his neck and he'd have to explain–

 

“I know what you mean,” Johnny said. “Why should I care what you have to say about it?”

 

“The Anti-Christ gives you a warning and you challenge it?”

 

Johnny glared at Pepito while shielding his eyes from the sun. “Yeah, some people would call that righteous, even.”

 

“Okay, really now. Let's not either of us be fooled into thinking you're capable of doing anything _righteous_.” He laughed, though it was mostly the sound of smoke and chains, and shook his head. “To _think_ I let Squee convince me to talk to you.”

 

_“Squee_ sent you up here?”

 

Squee had been trying to tell Johnny something. He'd tried to warn him. And Johnny only knew that because Edgar had...

 

Pepito sighed and picked at one of his fingernails. “Yes. Seems he's worried about you two and your... _thing.”_

 

“There is no _thing.”_

 

“A night sleeping. Alone. Together.” Pepito gestured to the sky. “Under the stars! Secluded on the roof! Humans seem to think this sort of thing romantic.”

 

“Humans are _wrong,_ ” Johnny growled. While this was definitely true in the broad scheme of things, it was probably a lie here. Everything Johnny did was a lie and all that felt true was the noise in his head, the blood that wasn't actually on his hands, and Edgar.

 

“Then this won't be difficult for you and I can go home and reassure Squee. You need to stop with this you and him business. You keep it up, and he's going to suffer some incredible pain.”

 

Johnny looked back to Edgar as though he could fucking _check_ for future pain.

 

“Just him?”

 

“Well, no,” Pepito admitted with a shrug. “Probably not. But him _especially._ ”

 

“What kind of pain? Why should I even believe you? And what would us…” He searched for a word that was not gross. He didn't find one. “...'having a thing' have to do with that?”

 

He had a sudden memory of blood. Always more blood. This time a splatter, like Devi painting, like the fountain in the emporium, like a firework of gore. He clenched his fists and tried to focus on Pepito's voice.

 

“Don't believe me, believe _Squee._ We're trying to do all this with as little net suffering as possible, and this one here will be the one who suffers most of if you keep doing what it looks like you're doing.” He beamed down at Johnny, suddenly chipper. Like a game show host going in and out of commercial breaks, he could turn the enthusiasm on and off at will. “But, since you're not having a _thing_ , it doesn't matter, does it?”

 

“No.” Johnny struggled through the single syllable, flashes of blood and the clanging of metal surging through his head.

 

“I'm happy we had this chat. Have a lovely morning not having a thing.” Pepito bowed and stepped backward into some black fog. The fog enveloped him, and then melted in the sun, taking Pepito with it.

 

For a minute or two, it was just Johnny, his thoughts, and the morning. The light warmed the surface of the roof and covered the town with some brief innocent-looking glow. It was bullshit, of course, but it was a pleasant illusion.

 

Edgar remained deeply asleep next to Johnny, unaware of Anti-Christ and new-world sunshine and blood thoughts and incredible pain.

 

And now Johnny was going to tell him that the Anti-Christ had vetoed the relationship on the heels of Egar trying to get a real answer from Johnny about it.

 

All the things that Johnny lied about, and this one truth was going to look like a particularly cruel lie.

 

“Incredible pain, huh?”

 

Edgar twitched at the sound of Johnny's voice. Johnny felt like he should be doing something other than sitting there looking at Edgar, but there wasn't time to move and look less like some sort of dramatic movie before Edgar opened his eyes.

 

“Um, hey.” Edgar blinked at him, a little dazed, and tried to smile.

 

“Hey.”

 

Edgar sat up, blearily squinting around for his glasses. He found them among some gravel off to his left.

 

“Well, that felt educational for my back, if nothing else.”

 

Johnny grinned at him. “You talk like a goddamn old man sometimes. How did you learn that?”

 

Edgar put on his glasses. “Well, Devi tells me I've never been one, so I'm making up for it now.”

 

Johnny looked up at the sky, and some far off trees. “I guess I never have been either.”

 

“Third time's a charm?”

 

Johnny laughed. “That's horrible.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

_Would they be okay now?_

 

“We'll be revolting old people.”

 

“Can you imagine Tenna? All glitter and hand knit _everything_.”

 

“I'm sorry, I take it back. Tenna will look _flawless._ The _rest of us_ will be revolting.”

 

Edgar smiled and all of Johnny's organs seemed to have an opinion on the matter: his heart wanted to burst from his chest, his lungs tried to collapse and grasp all the world's air, and his stomach churned in disgust.

 

Ever since Edgar stole the pool's keys for Johnny's birthday, certain songs made more sense. Oceans of notes had been written about feelings and motivations that Johnny had never had a frame of reference for before that point. They were ridiculous at best, and nauseating to the core at worst, and while most of them were still far beyond him, there were a few that had wormed their way into him and become alarmingly familiar.

 

They kind of made him sick the more he identified with their lyrics.

 

“So...” Edgar brushed some hair off of his forehead.

 

Johnny nodded. “Yeah.”

 

“What, um... What was this?”

 

“Sleeping,” Johnny said abruptly.

 

“Nny, that--”

 

Anything to get rid of this, anything to not have to talk about songs that kept making more sense and using Edgar as a pillow. “You know, Pepito was up here.”

 

“What?” Edgar rocked forward, ready to jump to his feet. “Why didn't you wake me up?”

 

“I couldn't.”

 

Edgar frowned, and suddenly the tone of the morning changed. “There is no way I wouldn't have woken up if you'd tried.”

 

“Pepito did something to your head, I don't know. He said you wouldn't wake up, you didn't.”

 

_“Really?”_

 

He'd never heard doubt like this in Edgar. Before now, it was 'really' with a laugh, 'really' that actually meant 'keep going, I like you', or 'I'm responding in a neutral way in order to obtain more information,' or just 'really, I'm interested'. This was plainly skeptical, sarcastic.

 

“Yes,” Johnny answered simply. Edgar deserved more than that, but Johnny was frightened of what would come out if he said too much. If he let too many words out, what would slip between them, unnoticed before it was too late?

 

His hands itched.

 

“Nny, please, I--”

 

“Trust me, okay?”

 

“I--”

 

“Just _trust me_. That's it.”

 

This was a tall order. A direct request for it was different than the kind of trust he'd been granted by the rest of the group. Their trust was more a casual disregard or willful ignoring of things they were unsure of until Devi or Jimmy exploded and then things returned to normal. He'd cultivated trust that wasn't from the start, just because everyone else was as confused as he was. Now he was learning more, and Edgar was going out and learning on his own, and if anything fell apart...

 

Edgar was quiet. Not quite frowning, but definitely thinking, considering, judging, deciding.

 

“Okay.”

 

Johnny exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He turned to one side to start standing up, and then Edgar's voice stopped him mid-motion.

 

“I will trust you,” Edgar said slowly. “I already _do_ , even. But you can't – don't do things that you know are going to fuck with my head about all this. It's not fair.”

 

His whole body wanted to shake with the tenseness that came from his lungs. “I wasn't trying to.”

 

Edgar sighed and stood up. “Just … think about it more, okay? If you really don't want anything to do with me or this or whatever, then don't torture me – or either of us.”

 

The feeling in Johnny's lungs was also in Edgar's voice. Tense muscles, shaking lip, raised eyebrows, breathy tone. This whole fucking thing was an awful mistake. Should never have let Edgar talk about it, should never have been curious about it, should never have indulged notions brought on by stolen keys, should have denied everything, should have hurt Edgar differently when it came up.

 

“That aside,” and Edgar brushed off his jeans the way he did any time they brought food up from the basement, “what did Pepito have to say?”

 

Johnny blinked, pushed himself up to his knees, and stood. 

 

_Is that it?_

 

Edgar wasn't waiting for some TV-caliber apology? Not even a shitty Johnny-caliber one?

 

“Um, he said 'incredible pain,' mostly.”

 

“Like what Todd said?” Detached. Facts. Maybe Johnny had ruined everything with one ill-advised night on a roof.

 

“Yeah.” More than that, he had to give more than that, Edgar deserved more than that. “Yeah, he said... he said you would be in incredible pain if we were...” He looked at Edgar, heard Pepito in his head, heard his own protests and lies and frustrated wishes to the contrary. “A _thing.”_

 

There it was, there was the skeptical face, the underpinning of hurt, the analyzing of options, weighing probabilities...

 

“...and he showed up while I was magically sleeping?”

 

The distrust.

 

“Yes.”

 

“You swear?”

 

“Yes, fuck. I know what it fucking looks like, and I'm not that petty. I'm not just going to make up supernatural shit to justify this when we have _actual_ supernatural shit _actually_ happening. I --”

 

He wanted to say, “ _I like you, I wouldn't lie to you,”_ but he choked on it a bit. Too much. Too much could sneak out that way, and it'd be too much for him and too much for Edgar and too much too much.

 

Everything was too much. Fuck, he'd now reached the pathetic point at which his own  _hands_ were too much. 

 

“It's okay,” Edgar said, but in a way that said it definitely wasn't. “Let's just go home.”

 

He took a few steps toward the door and then stopped abruptly and looked over his shoulder at Johnny.

 

“Do you still want to be there?”

 

Johnny nodded. “Yeah. Do you still _want_ me to be there?”

 

“Yeah.” Edgar shrugged and reached for the door's handle. “It's probably not healthy, but I do.”

 

“We were just visited by the Anti-Christ and we cut our heads open on purpose last night. We have six reflections between us. Our  _existence_ isn't healthy.”

 

“Then why not--” Edgar squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. He hauled the door open. “Never mind.”

 

Edgar led them out of the building. They took no scenic routes, no trips through the neighbors' fenced in yards, just walked.

 

Passing Pepito's house, there was the sound of static. Outside his head or inside, Johnny didn't know, but it was there. He said nothing about it to Edgar. As the static faded, they passed Jimmy's parking lot. Even from here, Johnny heard little breezes of Jimmy's song. Jimmy had always been the loudest, the easiest to read, even sitting fifty feet away inside a trailer.

 

Tenna was almost as easy, though her song rarely projected so far. She and Jimmy were very much alike in their lack of restraint regarding their emotions and it carried through to their songs. There was never a time, unless they were singing something else, that Johnny sat in Tenna and Jimmy's presence and heard nothing from them. Their difference came in which kind of emotions strengthened the sound. Tenna's was glee, excitement, and joy in novelty. Jimmy was fueled by ambition, success, and frustrated anger.

 

Devi was more difficult, more controlled. She felt strongly, there was no doubt about that, but she channeled those feelings into painting, drumming, screaming. Her song was rarely heard while she was doing nothing or just chatting. Devi could only be properly experienced, really heard, when she was letting the torrent inside of her out.

 

And now Edgar.

 

So far, nothing from Edgar. Johnny had waited for it from the first afternoon they spent together. He'd thought then that Edgar would have been just like Jimmy and would have blared his song constantly and aggressively through the world around him from the sheer force of his feelings. He'd heard something from Edgar in the beginning, he thought. A note or two, a notion. Maybe just a feeling. Maybe he'd just expected it so hard that he made it up.

 

Sometimes, he hoped that Edgar just didn't have one. Other times, he'd have moments when he heard the television or a video game and forgot himself long enough to get excited that it might finally be Edgar's song.

 

This roof thing should have done it. Either confessing his unfortunate feelings, or sleeping, or even the strong upset about feelings after the sleeping. Something like that should have set it off. If Edgar had been Jimmy, the strength of the song would have sent Johnny hurtling over the side of the roof and into the pavement. Even Devi and Tenna, when confronted with what Johnny had put Edgar through, would have had some sort of audible reaction in their songs. He'd have felt something.

 

But Edgar was quiet in all ways. No song in Johnny's head, no words on the way home.

 

Edgar opened the door for him, and once they were both inside, he finally spoke again.

 

“Why did you do that?”

 

“Do what?” But he knew exactly what, he was just stalling.

 

“Make us sleep up there. Sleep  _on_ me after telling me you wanted nothing to do with anything I said.”

 

“We can't do anything with it.  _I_ can't do anything with it.”

 

Edgar stopped him from retreating to the couch or the recliner. “Nny, that's not what I asked you.” He put his hands up and Johnny detected the tiniest flicker of anger. “I know, I know, Pepito, _horrible pain_ , whatever. But you told me no before that. I'll deal with it, I'm not pushing you about it, I'm not nagging about it, I'm not entitled to anything, et cetera, et cetera, but that sleeping thing... What was that?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“Can you  _try_ not to be super vague about this? This is kind of big deal to me.”

 

“It is to me too! I just--!” The blood in his mind was back, with this ugly clanging, and now there was a splash, a slop. Like someone had flung applesauce onto the floor. “I just  _can't_ , there's-- There's shit in my head and on my hands and there's too much. Please stop talking about this.”

 

Edgar sighed and let Johnny slip by, let him hide in himself and in the furniture. Things on all sides, easy to feel there, easy to feel _present._ “Nny, I'm not trying to make things difficult. I understand that things are not--” He twisted his face as he looked for the right word. “...ideal.”

 

“Yeah, just a little bit.” Johnny twisted into the recliner, felt better with something around him, something grounding. That sound was definitely not applesauce.

 

“But that doesn't get you out of everything. You aren't the only one going through things. You aren't the only one remembering things.”

 

“I know that.” It was short, clipped, and, if he was honest, a bit defensive.

 

“I don't know whether you were mocking me, or trying to make me feel better.”

 

“I wasn't.”

 

“Which?”

 

“Either.”

 

“Then what-?”

 

“I don't know, Edgar! I told you already!” He sat up in the recliner, ready to leap from it if needed, and all the words poured out, just as he feared they would. “I said I can't deal with this now and you're just picking at it! I like you too, okay?! There, I said it a-fucking-gain! Are you fucking  _happy?_ I shouldn't have said anything, I should have just fucking  _lied_ to you!”

 

“I'm glad you didn't.” He was so much calmer than he should have been. Fucking Edgar and his fucking level-headed bullshit.

 

“Yeah, well, it fucked everything up that I didn't lie to you, so that's fantastic. I'm glad that you're happy that this is all a gigantic mess now, I truly am.”

 

“You don't have to be sarcastic with me, I'm serious.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“Hey, come on. Listen to me, okay?” Edgar sat down on the couch. “I'm glad to know you like me too, even if you say we can't do anything with it. If you'd lied to me, yeah, you would have saved me some angst over sleeping on the roof, but … I don't know where I'm going with that. I'm just kind of happy you wish you hadn't caused any of this. It's sweet in a backwards sort of way.”

 

Johnny harumphed and curled back into the recliner cushions. Edgar smiled at him, and Johnny's ribs tried to crack open from the strain his heart put on them. He wondered, briefly, how he could get it to go away.

 

_Not by sharing a fucking house with him, you dumb fuck._

 

“I don't want all this to be ruined,” Edgar said. “I really like having you here, I like us being friends, I like  _liking you_ . I get that you can't deal with it right now, and that's okay. I'll help you deal with everything else like I have been, and if you change your mind about your ability to deal with me, will you tell me?”

 

Johnny picked his head up. “Honestly?”

 

“Preferably, yes.”

 

“Probably not. I'm not good at this shit.”

 

Edgar looked a bit pained. “Make it up. You're good at that.”

 

“I won't fuck with your head,” Johnny said, twisting one foot around his ankle. “Not on purpose. I don't want to make it worse, I don't want to--” He stopped himself, trying to preserve Edgar's feelings, and then thought maybe 'honesty time' was not the best time to bother. “I don't want to hurt you.”

 

' _Incredible pain.'_

 

Maybe it wouldn't matter what he did.

 

“Thanks,” Edgar said. He leaned forward, cautious, like talking to something that might lash out. Like Johnny was some kind of wild animal. Like someone he used to be. “If you won't tell me, is it okay if I check back in with this subject later? Sometime when you feel better?”

 

“Yeah, but...” The agreement came so quickly that he surprised himself. “But I'm really not good at this stuff, and you're going to be kind of disappointed even if – Are you not even thinking about what Pepito said? You are actively asking for a chance to be in incredible pain later?”

 

Edgar smiled gently. “You just said you don't want to hurt me.”

 

“That doesn't mean I can't, or that I won't accidentally. And Pepito didn't say _I_ had to be doing the hurting.” Blood again. Bursts like time-lapsed flowers, and then in pools swirling like rainbow oil in parking lot puddles. Shattering of bone – he didn't even know how he recognized the sound – and a tiny click of broken glass.

 

“ You have said - more than a few times - that you don't like being led or fated to do things. Pepito is telling you what you're going to do, what you're _supposed_ to do for whatever thing he has in mind for you. Next time you think about this, disregard Pepito, and tell me what you'd want to do if he'd never said anything.”

 

_Where the fuck does he come up with all this? What shows did he watch that gave him weird zen fortune cookie wisdom for all occasions?_

 

“I'll try,” Johnny said. It came out a bit strained.

 

“I can work with that.”

 

Johnny heard the springs in the couch shift and he looked up. Edgar was smiling at him, standing between him and couch.

 

“I'm going to get something to eat. I'll get something for you too, if you want, and then will you watch a movie with me?”

 

“Um, yeah, okay.”

 

 

 

 

The movie was terrible, which made it great. Edgar loved these as much as Johnny loved infomercials, and seeing him laugh at how poorly everything was made, or filmed, or acted had been a highlight of many of Johnny's evenings here. Today, it hurt a little, but it also helped heal the gash Johnny had inflicted in whatever their relationship was. Fifteen minutes into the film (if it could be called that), Johnny abandoned the recliner and the crust of his sandwich to take a seat on the cushion next to Edgar.

 

“Oh, oh, you're going to love this!” Edgar gushed during one particularly ridiculous scene half an hour later. “Wait till you see this guy's reaction when his hands get dissolved.”

 

“Wait, you've seen this already?”

 

“Yeah, I used to watch this one all the time.”

 

“On purpose?”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

In the scenes that followed, a man and a woman struggled against a mattress that was apparently eating the man's hands. The man made a sound that may have been straining, but could have easily been the dubbed in sounds of some sort of livestock mating. When they pulled his hands away from the bed, he had only bone left, yet there was no screaming. The man on screen seemed only mildly inconvenienced and looked at his hands with a sort of bored detachment while his female companion stayed entirely silent.

 

“This is amazing,” Johnny whispered.

 

Edgar flapped his hands and shushed him. “It gets better, wait, wait.”

 

Just then, the man with no flesh left on his hands distantly muttered, “I don't think I can stand it” and sighed against the wall. Edgar and Johnny burst into laughter. Johnny's chest still felt like bursting open, it was still painful, but it seemed less like it was trying to kill him. Without the sick feeling in his stomach, the pain in his chest was less an attempt by his organs to murder him and more an affirmation that he was alive.

 

The scene ended with a long lingering shot of the man's skeleton hands burning on a fire after they'd been snapped off by the man's silent female companion, and Johnny laughed so hard against Edgar's shoulder he could barely breathe. Edgar laughed right along with him. It probably meant something that in moments when he wasn't thinking, or controlling things or considering Pepito, Johnny gravitated toward Edgar, but neither of them said a word about it.

 

 

 

In the morning, Johnny almost forgot they'd had their little flare up about feelings and supernatural garbage. Things felt as normal as they could get in a house where the occupants visited the apparent Anti-Christ on a regular basis.

 

For breakfast, they made several pieces of cinnamon toast slathered with peanut butter and some kind of chocolate spread, at Johnny's suggestion,

 

“I don't know where this has been all my lives,” Edgar said when he tried it, “but I want to state for the record, and for the basement, that I love it and I need to never run out.”

 

“I will steal you some if the basement doesn't provide,” Johnny told him, sputtering several crumbs into his lap.

 

“You are too kind.”

 

“I try.”

 

Edgar smiled fondly at him, and Johnny returned it before he had the sense to think it could be dangerous to do so. He wanted Edgar to smile all the time _and_ for him to never do it again.

 

They sat on the couch together with their stacks of breakfast toast while an infomercial for a product that cleaned lime deposits played on the television.

 

“Hey, do you want to try something?” Edgar asked.

 

Glancing between toast and lime scale, Johnny found a certain unease about where Edgar was going with this. “Not when you're that vague about it.”

 

Edgar covered his mouth as he laughed, presumably so he didn't spew chocolate and toast everywhere. “I just thought we could test the basement out. You really like these, right?” He gestured toward the TV.

 

“Infomercials? Yeah.”

 

“Next time we see a pile of free stuff on the sidewalk, let's grab a table or something and see if we can get the basement to give us some of the stuff that lets you take the paint off with notebook paper.”

 

“Oh,  _fuck_ . Yes, yes, definitely. Can we somehow think really hard about cleaning the bathroom and get this stuff too?”

 

“It's worth a shot. The basement does what it thinks will make you happy, so if you feel dedicated to thinking about lime scale all day, go for it.”

 

Johnny bit dramatically into his toast. “I shall give it my all.”

 

Edgar glanced at the clock above the television and picked up the remote. “It's starting over, can we find something else?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Sure, I've seen this one anyway.”

 

Edgar only flipped a few channels before he stopped on one of his space shows. Edgar was a little quiet about his enthusiasm for things in general, at least compared to Johnny and the others, but if you knew what signs to look for, it was easy to see when he was especially excited. His eyes widened just a little, and his shoulders pulled up closer to his ears. Depending on the subject matter, he'd smile, but it was always kind of charmingly restrained.

 

Certain space shows earned the smile, and this was one of them.

 

“Oh, this one,” Edgar said fondly. “I love this one.”

 

“This is the one with the big spiky wheel, right?”

 

“What?”

 

“They live in the big wheel with the spikes.”

 

“...It's a space station, but yes, this is the one.”

 

“This is so dimly lit. I like the one with the rainbow colors and the gold lamé everywhere.”

 

“I do too. But it's always on, and this one never is.” Edgar smiled at the screen as though it hurt him a little.

 

“What's special about this one?”

 

“I used to pretend they were all my friends.”

 

“Oh.” Johnny had been prepared to make fun of Edgar's response, but he'd also expected a response that was less sad.

 

“It's okay,” Edgar said. “I know it's sort of dumb, but it's just what I had. If it wasn't this, it was video games. I was always really proud of the characters. Until I met you guys, the only relationships I had were with fictional people.”

 

“Sorry we didn't find you earlier then.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “It's okay. I got to take care of most of the really embarrassing developmental stuff with people who don't exist. My first crush was someone on this show. Then they killed her.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I'm sort of hoping that doesn't become a theme with me, by the way.”

 

“People you like dying?”

 

“Think you can handle that?”

 

“I'll do my best.”

 

How odd to think that Edgar existed at all before Johnny discovered him, let alone existed enough to have weird feelings at a television. Johnny had never had a comparable feelings experience until Edgar, though before Edgar came along he'd attempted to force it.

 

“Which one is she?” Johnny nodded toward the TV.

 

“Oh, umm...” Edgar laughed and tried to cover some red in his face. “You'll see her, maybe, she's kind of important. She's the one with the spots and the dark hair. She was just really lively, incredibly smart, had this really weird sense of humor, kinda wild, and had all these past lives she remembered. I thought she was great.”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “ _Really?”_

 

Edgar frowned and nodded, slowly chewing a bite of his toast. “It is possible I have a type.”

 

“Yeah, just a little. That's kind of alarmingly specific. Flattering, I guess, but wow, sorry about my lack of spots.”

 

“I'll manage somehow.”

 

It just kept coming up, they could not stop _talking_ about their stupid fondness for each other. How were they going to keep going like this? How long were they going to be able to pretend? How long did they need to?

 

If there weren't anything in Johnny's head, if there was no blood, no sounds, no baking mascots, no blurs and black threatening to leak in... Then there would have been no hesitation. Johnny did not do well with romance-y bullshit, but the only kind he'd seen was on television. He didn't want what was on television.

 

Without Pepito, without his malfunctioning past lives, Johnny wanted whatever there was with Edgar.

 

“We didn't, uh... we didn't have this problem before, did we?” Johnny took his last piece of toast, though he really wasn't hungry for it.

 

It took Edgar a second to respond and then all he said at first was, “Ah.” He set the crust of his toast on his plate and clasped his hands together over his knees. “No. In fact, I-- I feel like previous versions of me would be a little disturbed.”

 

“Yeah. Same here.”

 

Though it wasn't quite _disturbed._ Perhaps he wasn't as good at differentiating the people in his head as Edgar was, but the feeling Johnny got when he let his previous selves reflect on Edgar was an unsettling kind of churn in his stomach. It could have been some sort of anxious anticipation as much as primal revulsion. There wasn't enough context in the feelings to know, and Johnny's sample size of humans this time around was pitifully small. Being on the outside of the world had made it easy to watch other people, to know what all their signals meant, to twist those he could reach into the shapes he liked, but it had made it difficult to relate to or be with them.

 

Edgar shrugged and tried to smile, tried to laugh it away. If Johnny hadn't seen genuine smiles on him frequently, he could have been fooled by it.

 

“You're always looking for something to differentiate us from the others, right?” Edgar asked.

 

He wasn't even a little bit interested in the toast anymore.

 

_Draw it out, poke at it._ “I guess, but... I'm wondering what they – _Why_ are they disturbed?”

 

The pause was only a second or two long but it was enough for Edgar's expression to betray that he suspected some of the same things Johnny did. But would he confront it?

 

“Well, we were friends or something. Wouldn't you be disturbed if a future you had some kind of thing for Tenna?”

 

Trying to talk his way around it. Out of it. Edgar was good at this, and Johnny knew it three times over.

 

The blood soaked into planks and ran through a metal grate in the floor when it stopped being fireworks, flowers, and paint. There was no panic, no urge to vomit, no reaction other than an irritation that there _was_ no reaction.

 

He was connected to it. Edgar's past selves don't care that he wants to hold hands, they care that it's _Johnny_ because they know something that Johnny doesn't even know yet. Something they're keeping from this Edgar. Something Johnny's others seem keen to have him remember.

 

“Nny, are you okay?”

 

Was that just now? Was Edgar asking right now, or before? Which Edgar?

 

He didn't remember closing his eyes or moving, so he was first surprised that he opened his eyes, and second that he was now looking at the ceiling. He tried to speak and ended up with a sort of 'Uuhhhn' instead.

 

“Oh, there you are. I was starting to think I should call Tenna.”

 

Johnny blinked away the fuzz at the edges of his vision. He followed the voice to the other end of the couch, where Edgar sat with his legs tucked under him, reading one of his Loch Ness Monster magazines on his knees.

 

“What just happened?”

 

“I was hoping you would tell me. We were talking and then you just stopped.”

 

“'Stopped'?” There was a blanket draped over him. The toast had been cleared away.

 

“You passed out. I... didn't know what else to do. It seemed like maybe it was best just to leave you asleep.”

 

“But you moved me.”

 

“I- yeah, sorry. You were all crumpled, I thought you'd be hurting later if I left you like that.” He put a hand up defensively and the magazine slid over his knee. “I didn't mean anything by it.”

 

Johnny twisted the blanket around in his hands. “How long?”

 

Edgar squinted up at the digital display above the television. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes. Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

 

“Fuck.”

 

“Did something bring this on?”

 

Johnny flopped sideways against the back of the couch. “There was a lot of blood in my head.”

 

“Oh.”

 

His mind raced as he clawed desperately inside his own skull for a memory to latch onto that was not horrible or difficult. “There's got to be something other than blood, there fucking – Tell me something you remember, Edgar.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“ _Anything_. Nothing _you_ remember is bloody. Tell me about a food you used to like but don't anymore, or the opposite. A movie we saw, something you used to wear, something you keep expecting to see now and still haven't. Something funny, something dumb, the most mundane shit you can find in your head. Anything.”

 

One of the best things about Edgar was that when it really counted he did not ask a bunch of questions. He understood when something was important, he knew when he was needed to drown something out. Maybe he even trusted Johnny enough to not worry about asking until later.

 

“Well, I think the most frustrating thing that isn't wondering about _you_ is remembering the tastes of foods, but not what they are. I get cravings for memories sometimes, you know? I don't know what the hell I want, because I've never had it in this lifetime, and being reincarnated didn't think I would need random food memories.”

 

Johnny smiled against the couch. “I crave food we've stolen, sometimes. All those picnics we crashed with old family recipes for beans or pie or whatever. You never taste some of those again.”

 

“Those cupcakes Jimmy took from the church back in December --”

 

“Right? Ugh, I will dream about those the _rest of my fucking life_.” He shrugged and shook his head. “Meanwhile, I can't even remember how and why we met, either time before this.”

 

Edgar reclined and gazed at the ceiling, relaxing into the conversation. “There's so little of the first time at all...”

 

“Yeah, it's you and me a room.”

 

“That's weird, don't you think? To meet for the first time, alone, in a room? How did we get there? Did someone set that up? Were we lost?”

 

“I don't know. That _is_ weird though.” Johnny pulled his knees closer to his chest. “You don't remember anything else in the room?”

 

“I don't think so? I remember just looking down at you, and I was... nervous or anxious or something. It was something a bit intense for me, I was uncomfortable.”

 

Johnny sat straight up. “Down? Down at me, like, your normal height down at me, or …?”

 

“Oh. Oh! Yeah, I was up higher than you! I was on a platform or something, maybe.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “I don't remember a platform. Though that doesn't mean anything, I suppose.”

 

“Stairs?” Edgar tried. “A balcony or loft or something?”

 

“I don't think so. But you were definitely up higher.” He looked at Edgar and almost laughed at how ridiculous this felt. “I didn't know you at all, but we were standing alone in some weird room together.”

 

“I don't remember leaving, or moving,” Edgar said. “In my head, we have this whole blank conversation with me at a fixed point and then there's just nothing.”

 

“Lots of dreams are like that, though, right? Mine are, anyway. You might just not remember moving.”

 

“Do you remember me moving?”

 

There was a brief flash of red and Johnny flinched. “No.”

 

Edgar just shrugged as though that was enough to make a point. He flicked the corner of his magazine a few times and bit his lip, thinking.

 

Finally, he looked back up. “This had to be something significant, don't you think? Why would we have come back to life to the time we were friends just because we once talked in a random room as scary people if it hadn't been something important that we did?”

 

“Unless we _didn't_ do something.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

Maybe the best way to get rid of all this remembering was just to be aggressive with it. Remember all of it at once, get it out of the way, conquer it.

 

Johnny turned to properly face Edgar, to watch his face, try to see what he knew. “Okay, so how about this: Do you remember remembering?”

 

“How so?”

 

“The time we knew each other longer, this last time, between the empty room and now. Did that guy remember being the first guy? Have we always known we were going around again?”

 

Edgar sat quietly, staring at the floor. He had to be just casually accessing all the things in his head. How nice to be on such good terms with them that they'd stay in their boxes until needed.

 

“I don't think so...?” Edgar finally answered. “That time around I have so much more to go on. I know we saw each other often, and a lot of what I remember feeling is that I hadn't meant to. I still thought of you as someone I really _knew,_ though, rather than someone I was just familiar with. The first time, there are really strong gut feelings toward you and that room, but that's all they are. I can't even figure out _what_ they are.”

 

Johnny almost laughed. “I know the feeling.”

 

“It's like I'm alone in a room and a light is flashing, but I don't know if it means I won something, or if the oxygen is being sucked from the room.”

 

“No blood, though, huh?”

 

“No,” Edgar said quietly. He seemed resigned to let it hang there for a moment or two, and then sat up abruptly. “But think about that! If you and I spent so much time together, and I remember no blood, then you couldn't have – it couldn't have been _everything_.” He was positive, gentle, and trying very hard to put a softer edge on all this.

 

“That'd be nice,” Johnny said. “I kind of doubt I'll be so lucky, but it'd be nice.”

 

“Is there blood with me? Ever?”

 

Johnny closed his eyes and tried to see it. He had his doubts about Edgar's optimism, had suspicions that Edgar just hadn't remembered the bloody parts _yet_ , but it was worth it to try. What memories he had were barely substantial enough to pick apart the way that they'd picked out Edgar looking _down,_ but he might be able to fray them a little.

 

The first Edgar wasn't accessible without seeing the same explosion of blood that had shut Johnny down half an hour ago. The second Edgar, not a drop. Television with nothing. Floor dirty but not bloody. Car much the same.

 

Getting _in_ the car. Often. They drove to get Freezies. Sat in the car to talk for a long time even if they'd talked a long time before deciding to get them.

 

“They always discontinued the flavors you liked.”

 

“What?” Edgar's voice. _This_ Edgar.

 

Johnny opened his eyes. Still on the couch. Still today. Still fond of this Edgar, piss poor idea that that was. “Freezies,” Johnny said. “We-- I always got cherry, but you liked the weird flavors, the ones they put out to tie in with movies and shit. They'd get rid of everything you liked.”

 

“I'm not surprised, for some reason.”

 

“I guess there's not blood in the 24-7...”

 

“There, see?”

 

Johnny shook his head and dragged a hand over his face. “This is pathetic. Looking for tiny snippets of time that _weren't_ a bloodbath.”

 

“You do what you have to.”

 

“What _was_ Idoing, though? I … I keep thinking I _can't_ just have had unfathomably bad luck and witnessed a constant parade of car accidents and terrorist attacks on fast food chains. What if it was _me_?”

 

“It can't be. Why would we have been friends?”

 

“Maybe you didn't know. Maybe I kept it all secret. Maybe you _did_ know and you're more fucked up than either of us thought.”

 

Edgar bit his lip and his eyebrows wrinkled his forehead. “I... guess that's possible.”

 

Such a strange impulse, wanting to make Edgar feel better immediately after wanting to drain every memory from him. Johnny's list of things he was not fond of was long, but upsetting Edgar had been rapidly climbing the ranks lately and was currently sitting very near the top.

 

' _Incredible pain.'_

 

“What if that's the pain Pepito is talking about, and --”

 

Edgar's private worry for himself vanished and he immediately directed his sort of stern sympathy at Johnny. “Hey. Stop. I told you not to think about that. That doesn't matter to me.”

 

“It does to _me_!” It came out before Johnny knew it was coming. “What if--?”

 

Edgar put his hands up and turned so his whole body faced Johnny. “Stop, stop, _stop._ You're going to drive yourself crazy doing this.”

 

Johnny swallowed. _Maybe I am already. There are three people in one skull and I don't think we get along._

 

There was Edgar smiling again. Gently, probably sweetly, though Johnny was not very skilled at identifying such things. Sincerely happy to face potential horror like all those guys in red shirts on the gold lamé space show. “Please don't worry about it,” Edgar said. “Let's just do what we're doing.”

 

“I don't want to cause some sort of horrible shit to happen to you! I'm not immensely fond of the idea of you in pain!” The splatter and the bone and the bursts of red seeped in just at the edges of his thoughts and now he really couldn't contain all these fantastically stupid words and he was going to make things _so much worse fuck fuck_

 

“I'm glad you're concerned. Really, you have... _no idea_. Consider, though, that I might be weighing one pain against another.”

 

“But-”

 

“I'd rather be in pain because I spent time _with_ you than because I _didn't.”_

 

“And what if the Pepito stuff is worse?”

 

“It's my risk to take.”

 

Edgar's rational calm was both anchoring and infuriating. Who on television could teach this kind of weird and quiet resolve? Was this coming from one of his other selves? The guy who tolerated bloodbaths? Was this him? “And I don't get the choice of what to inflict? That's not  _ my _ choice to make?”

 

Edgar shrugged in the face of Johnny's pseudo-moral outrage. “I guess it is, though I wish you wouldn't take responsibility for Pepito's bullshit when we both know that it is, in fact, bullshit, and that without it, we might...” He brought his hands up for a moment and then dropped them, along with the rest of his sentence. “Well.”

 

Johnny deflated somewhat. His arguments hadn't been enough to distract from the core issue. “We keep coming back to this.”

 

“I know, I'm sorry. I don't mean to, it's just sort of... there.”

 

“It's okay, it isn't just you.”

 

Edgar sighed and tapped his hands on his thighs. He glanced around the room and then suddenly brightened. “Oh!”

 

“Mm?”

 

He smiled broadly and reached into his pocket. He pulled out his hand and revealed the tiny camera. “I still have to give this back to Dib. Why don't you come with me? Do you feel well enough?”

 

“I guess?”

 

“We can drop it off and then go get Freezies. Just like before.”

 

This was poorly considered at best. It was some impressively deluded optimism that would drag up bad memories at worst.

 

And for whatever reason, it made Johnny smile.

 

“Okay.”

 

 

 

 

Dib popped his head out of his cabinet in the middle of Edgar and Johnny's slightly lopsided rendition of a song about two people plotting to cook people into pies. Edgar was not a fantastic singer, but time with Johnny had turned him into an enthusiastic one, as long as Johnny was involved.

 

Their group changed the words to nearly everything they sang to suit their situations, names, or personalities, and the cannibal pie song was no exception, even with just Edgar and Johnny participating. Maybe especially with just them.

 

_“Oh, what's the sound of the world out there?”_

 

_“What, Mister V, what, Mister V, what is that sound?”_

 

_“Those crunching noises pervading the air!”_

 

_“Yes, Mister V, yes, Mister V, yes, all around!”_

 

_“It's man devouring man, my dear -”_

 

And then, together, _“Then who are we to deny it in here?!”,_ before they lost the song to laughter.

 

“What are you two _doing?_ ” Dib regarded them as though they were covered in dirt, or perhaps a Bigfoot hoax.

 

“Having fun,” Johnny replied. “Do they have that on your planet?”

 

Dib lowered his eyebrows, unimpressed. “Funny. Have you finally brought my camera?”

 

Edgar unclipped the tiny camera from his necklace and tossed it gently at Dib, who caught it with significantly more hand flailing than necessary. A knot began to twist in Johnny's stomach.

 

“There you go,” Edgar said. “Pepito saw it pretty much immediately, so I don't know if anything's on it.”

 

Dib grinned so hard his glasses titled on his nose. To have to sit with this for at least another hour... “Well, come on, quick! Come in, come in, we have to analyze this!”

 

“Actually, we're just here to drop this off. We have somewhere else to be.”

 

The stomach-knot vanished only to be replaced with some odd warm hope. Edgar smiled at Johnny, all smug and knowing and proud of himself for sparing Johnny's brain from an interaction with Dib.

 

_Maybe I can just tell him to stop smiling? That's not an unreasonable request to make of a person, is it?_

 

Dib's joyous expression fell. “What? How can you _say_ that? Do you have _any idea_ what could be on here?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Some, yeah. I _was_ there, after all. You can call me when you find something. Do you have a pen?”

 

“You have to be kidding.” Dib was breathless, lost.

 

“Or I could just leave and you could hope I come back.”

 

Dib frowned and reached into his lair. He emerged with a touch screen tablet. “Fine, just write your number on here. Do you have a webcam or email or anything?”

 

“Afraid not. Just a slightly supernatural land line.”

 

There was some tangible joy to be had in Dib's expression of dismay. “A _landline?”_

 

Johnny reached for the tablet. “Here, you can have my number, you freak. It's some cell phone I stole.”

 

“You stole it? It's not going to just keep working.”

 

“It will. _Trust me._ ”

 

“Feel privileged,” Edgar told Dib. “Our _actual friends_ had to fight him for that number.”

 

The tablet read the digits of Johnny's phone number back in an overly-excited voice that sounded like it could be Dib in ten or fifteen years.

 

“We'll see how good I feel if it's even real,” Dib replied. He took the tablet back from Johnny and sighed. “I hope you two are sincere about all this.”

 

“We are,” Edgar said quickly. “We just have something else to do today. It's important.”

 

He stepped backward and Johnny followed his lead, saluting Dib on the way out of the band room as Dib tried to form a sentence about priorities and what was 'truly important'.

 

“Have a nice day, Dib!” Johnny called out. “Keep up the good work!”

 

He wasn't excited about Dib knowing the things that had come out while talking to Pepito, but Edgar had made a decent case for using what resources they had, and Dib was nothing if not a resource. Plus, who was he going to tell?

 

To Johnny's surprise, Edgar was not even interested in speculating about Dib. “Where do you want to try for this Freezie?”

 

“What, you think I want to walk all the way across town for this thing? There's a 24/7 down the street.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “I don't know, maybe you wanted a special Freezie.”

 

“No, I think that's you and your endangered flavors. I can get cherry anywhere.”

 

“Fair enough.” Edgar gestured down the block with a shallow bow. “Lead on, then.”

 

There was no time to be charmed (or be upset at being charmed) because the fire hydrant at the end of the block twisted up into the air in front of them before they'd taken four steps. Johnny recognized this as Pepito before he even registered that this was something he should be terrified of.

 

Pepito's body appeared before them with a nearly comic stretch and then snapped back into his usual proportions. “Well, _look_ , a cute little mid-day stroll!”

 

“Are you back already?” Johnny snapped. “Do you just stalk me now?”

 

“I'm just here to see if you've taken me seriously. It occurred to me that you could have dismissed me as a dream, and one can just never be too sure.” He pressed his palms together in front of his chest, like some old time black and white house wife. “Where are your other minions today?”

 

Edgar raised an eyebrow. “'Minions?'”

 

Johnny crossed his arms. “At home, at school, I don't know. Don't you follow them too?”

 

“None of them have my key on their necks.”

 

“You're welcome to take it back!” Johnny took a step toward Pepito, and nearly jumped from his skin when Edgar held him back at the elbow. Pepito noticed, if his raised eyebrows were any indication.

 

“That's quite all right,” Pepito said slowly.

 

“Did you toy with other version of me, too?”

 

“Oh, no. You had other things doing that for you.” He buffed his nails against his chest. “And, frankly, I was still in training at the time.”

 

Edgar glanced at Johnny and released his elbow. “Satan Training?”

 

“We all must start somewhere,” Pepito sniffed, turning his nose up. “I am not ashamed.”

 

Johnny's heart raced as he considered a younger Pepito and a younger Squee. “You were alive for other versions of us? You _directly_? You know how long it's been?”

 

Pepito held up his hands. “Now, now. Let's not get off track here. I'm only here to make sure you heard my last warning. Or maybe...” He looked directly at Edgar and surveyed him up and down once. “Maybe I'm just making sure _you_ heard.” He jabbed a finger against Edgar's chest with the word 'you.'

 

“I heard,” Edgar said, and he pushed Pepito's hand away.

 

They'd both become so gutsy in the face of the supernatural. Knowing that Pepito was essentially Satan should have instilled fear, should have made Edgar and Johnny jumpy and nervous. Instead, learning from Dib and knowing that things equally horrible lived in at least one of their heads fostered an admittedly foolish disregard for Pepito and his bullshit.

 

“So we're all on the same page and I can tell Squee to stop worrying, yes?”

 

“I've decided to ignore it,” Edgar said suddenly.

 

Pepito frowned and abruptly became far less of a parody of himself. Like he had during their first meeting, Pepito's entire persona changed, his appearance rippled away, and the limits of the physical world no longer applied to him.

 

“Did my favorite key holder not tell you about the _incredible pain_ part of this little warning?”

 

“I did,” Johnny said. “Repeatedly.”

 

“I just don't care,” Edgar added.

 

“You ought to.” Pepito's voice split apart, hundreds of tiny parts making one single entity, like an audible faceted gem. “I have a feeling you are the type to be particularly affected.”

 

He reached out one long greenish finger and scratched one long claw-like red nail up Edgar's throat and underneath his jaw. Edgar said nothing to him, but his breathing changed. No matter how fearless Edgar tried to be, and how ridiculous Pepito had just been, this Pepito was frightening.

 

Johnny tried to step between them, though his own sense of self preservation didn't let him get as far as required for noble self-sacrifice. Which was all for the better, if he was going to keep ignoring this _thing_.

 

It was, however, enough to distract Pepito from potentially skewering Edgar's neck.

 

“You're basing all this demonic warning bullshit on a _feeling_?” Johnny spat. “You show up pretending to be a fire hydrant because you have some _notion_ of Edgar's personality?”

 

Said personality was not deterred by Pepito's toying, and Johnny heard Edgar's breath change once they were closer. “Why do you need to be so vague about this 'incredible pain' anyway? Do you have something holding you back?”

 

Pepito snarled and took a deep breath. And then another. With each breath his form inflated and scaled him up until he towered over them. 'Dressed' in all black, thin and sharp, and still draped in the chains and locks of their first meeting, he stood out against his surroundings like a deep crack, or an ink spill over reality.

 

The image made Johnny's head a bit fuzzy.

 

“There is more tied up in you two than whether or not anyone suffers, and everything will happen whether you do or not. Frankly, I do not care.” Pepito's voice echoed itself, split into pieces and then joined back together again. His voice pierced through the air and left a ringing in Johnny's ears that lingered in the background of everything Johnny could perceive. This was not pain ringing, there was something to this. Something was struggling to be heard, or Johnny was struggling to hear it, or both. Pepito spoke again and Edgar flinched.

 

“I have given you this warning as a favor. There will be suffering regardless. I have only given you the opportunity to lessen it. It is up to you whether you will decide to be too foolish to heed the warning.”

 

Pepito vanished in a puff of smoke that stung Johnny's eyes and rushed into his throat before vanishing as though it had never been there. Johnny lost the urge to cough immediately and he and Edgar were left standing on the sidewalk, blinking at a hydrant that had just housed a flamboyant demon.

 

“Well, then,” Johnny said.

 

“Yeah.” Edgar ran a hand over his throat.

 

“So that was _twice_ today.”

 

Edgar nodded, and swallowed. “I was thinking the same thing. He said it was a favor, but it's kind of insistent for a favor.”

 

“So he's either being pressured, or he feels guilty, or he's not as important a Satan as he likes to pretend he is.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You still going to ignore him?”

 

“Yep. Anything else is up to you.”

 

“You know, just because something is noble on TV --”

 

“That's not why,” Edgar snapped. “I _can_ tell the difference, thanks.”

 

“Just checking.”

 

Edgar softened and sighed, though he remained a little wary of the hydrant. “Still want a Freezie?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Johnny had consumed dozens and dozens of Freezies in this lifetime alone. He'd perfected the art of operating the machine backwards and with his eyes closed. He knew exactly how long he could hold it in one hand before his hand got too cold, he knew just what a full cup should weigh at every size, he knew what it felt like to have a Freezie thrown in his face, and he knew what it felt like to be the one doing the throwing. He knew Freezies inside and out, and there were few things in his life so routine, so familiar, so mundane.

 

And it had always been that way.

 

Edgar strayed from the Freezie machine and tapped one of the freezer cases with his knuckles. “Hey, this place has Frooty Pops. It's been a while since I've seen those.”

 

“Oh. I – I really like those.”

 

“Do you want to get some?”

 

The Freezie cup filled in his hands, swirling perfectly into formation. “I don't think I should.”

 

“Everything okay?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Except here he was again with his head full of blood and his hand full of frozen cherry flavored corn syrup.

 

_We've done this so many times._

 

There should have been blood there. He should have smelled it mingling with the cherry syrup.

 

They left the store and the sensors made their generic 'bong' as the girl behind the register complained that it was always going off when nothing was there.

 

The Freezie felt so right for this situation that it was hideously wrong.

 

“Edgar?”

 

“Mmm?” Edgar glanced over, straw in his mouth, some kind of neon green and blue concoction swirling around inside it.

 

“Why did we get these?”

 

“It...” He released the straw and wiped the corner of his mouth with the side of his hand. “... seemed like a good idea?”

 

“Do you remember why we got them before?” _Do you know more than you're telling me? I didn't expect you to be the one with the lies._

 

“We liked them, I guess.”

 

Johnny shook his head, a bit disappointed in Edgar's answer. “I don't think so.”

 

“What _do_ you think, then?”

 

“We're going to start using these for the same thing, the same kind of warped therapy two lives in a row now.”

 

“Same thing?”

 

The condensation on the cup began soaking into Johnny's gloves. Unpleasant. He should dream up a pair made of something else.

 

“After something bloody.”

 

None of the images were clear, but the feelings were. Having a Freezie and long conversation on the heels of exposure to blood. There was more to this than accidents or generic trauma, if there was such a thing.

 

Edgar inclined his head slightly. “Are you okay? Should we go home?”

 

The cherry tasted the way it always had in every lifetime.

 

“Do you think this is all real, Edgar?”

 

“That might depend on what you mean by 'all this.' Or possibly 'real'.”

 

Johnny gripped the Freezie tightly. The cold stung his hand even through his glove. “Everything. Is Pepito really Satan? Does Dib really have fucking alien shit?”

 

“Nny, we're _invisible._ We both know a lot of weird shit is real and this isn't 'normal.'”

 

“Do you think I could have been a vampire?”

 

Edgar's straw squeaked uncomfortably. “Um.”

 

“I'm serious. I know that sounds fucking ridiculous, but I'm just – There was so much, and I feel like I was repulsed by it, but I needed it at the same time? What else would I have needed – I – fuck.”

 

“Vampires usually have the opposite problem we do with mirrors.”

 

“I _know_ , I _know_! I'm just – I really want this to make sense.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“No.” He took a long drink of the Freezie, let it get so cold and fill so much of his mouth he could have choked on it. Edgar waited quietly for him to finish gulping it down. “I'm not sure of anything except that I want to just forget about all of it, or else know it all already, or, or just--”

 

“You just want the process to stop.”

 

Johnny sighed. “Yes. Yes, that's it.”

 

“I--” Edgar stopped, coughed, and then looked sadly into his cup of sour blue raspberry apple something or other. “I can't help but feel I made all this worse for you.”

 

He looked up, perhaps expecting to be met with some sympathy, but Johnny wasn't sure what to say, how to react, or even how to arrange his face.

 

“I think,” Edgar continued, “that without me, you wouldn't have remembered any blood or... anything horrible, really. You could have just... done whatever.”

 

“Done whatever Pepito wanted, you mean.”

 

“What?”

 

“I had the key already,” Johnny said, shaking his Freezie cup for better sipping alignment. “Whatever he wants me to do, he'd have kept on trying to get me to do it without me meeting you.” He shrugged and took a few stabs at the bottom of the cup with his straw. “I guess maybe he really _isn't_ responsible for all this garbage in my head, the bastard.”

 

“Because he said _I was_ ,” Edgar said.

 

“He meant the other guy,” Johnny replied quickly.

 

“I know, I know.” Edgar shrugged and poked at his drink with his straw. “I guess he could have meant whoever did this at the other guy's request. Whoever's in charge of sending people back again.”

 

“And if that's not Pepito... Is it reasonable to assume there's some kind of Heaven?”

 

“Or some kind of Soul Depot Purgatory.”

 

Johnny felt himself smile, despite the blood in his mind and the cold in his hands. “They suck at their job, whoever they are. This is all shit I asked not to remember. You said I _specifically asked_ for that.”

 

Edgar nodded as he sucked up more Freezie. “You did. Maybe we can sue for some sort of breach of contract.”

 

“You want to sue _Heaven_?” The smile forced its way into a laugh, as much as he didn't want to enjoy himself too much. “That's the most American response to this situation I can imagine.”

 

“Blame television.”

 

“Okay, no, wait, maybe _that_ is.”

 

“I think I've been assimilated.”

 

Edgar gasped and then grinned, eyes wide, but Johnny stopped him before he could make the inevitable reference.

 

“No! No! Don't you fucking dare.”

 

“Oh, come on! What other chance do I have to put all those Star Trek marathons to good use? That was a perfect opportunity!” He was laughing, despite his protest.

 

_Why are you so much fun? Why can't I just shut this off and walk away? Will you never stop smiling?_

 

Johnny knew Edgar well. He knew him well enough to know what jokes he'd want to make, what conclusions he'd draw, how he'd think. It used to be that Johnny thought he lived with Devi and the others even though they didn't sleep under the same roof. He'd spent enough time with them that it felt like they were roommates and the whole town was their house. A year ago, he could not have imagined that he'd ever know anyone better than the girl with the skeleton knitting, the angry girl who painted everything, and the wannabe kid who didn't even know what he wanted to be.

 

And then he and Edgar worked in perfect sync with no planning in order to talk to Dib, to escape Jimmy in the pool on Johnny's birthday, to come up with a plan for stealing the cupcakes from that Christmas party.

 

“You'll have more opportunities, I'm sure.”

 

Edgar smiled even wider, and paired it with raised shoulders, a lowered chin...he smiled _into_ himself more and more often lately. Smaller, smaller, making himself – this situation? – smaller.

 

“You know,” Edgar said suddenly, “I guess I must have known about the blood.”

 

“Since we used to go get these after?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “I guess that too. But I mean, we wouldn't be here at all if I didn't know something was wrong with you.”

 

“I guess?”

 

“You don't think so?”

 

“You don't know what's wrong with me _now_ , do you?”

 

“Uh, you're remembering horrible shit.”

 

Johnny nodded. “True, but what I mean is that you probably would have been able to tell something was wrong without knowing exactly what it was.”

 

“I'd like that to be the case. I just feel that if the _blood_ was so often, and _I_ was so often... You would just have had to have been absolutely legendary at hiding.”

 

“You mean fucking _invisible._ ”

 

Edgar nearly dropped his Freezie. “Oh, my god.”

 

“I was mostly kidding actually.”

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I kind of meant for this to be fun.”

 

“No, don't, it's – ” Johnny smiled as he looked into his cup. “I actually feel pretty good, all things considered.”

 

“Oh, well... great.” Everything about his expression was unsure, but he was trying to smile through it. “If you're okay, I'm okay.”

 

Johnny laughed into his straw. He pulled the drink away and looked at Edgar – really looked at someone scared and someone trying to be more than he was and possibly someone who was lying – and felt fonder of him than he ever had of any infomercial, any Freezie, any song.

 

“You'll be waiting a long time to be okay, I think.”

 

“I've got time.”

 

_You should probably always smile._

 

 

 

That night, in the middle of backseat driving a suitably distracting video game about time travel, Johnny's phone rang.

 

“Uh-oh,” Johnny said when the first notes of 'Ride of the Valkyries' drummed from the tiny speakers.

 

Edgar paused the game. “Jimmy or Dib?”

 

Johnny picked up the phone. “Dib. Or else telemarketing.”

 

“You going to answer it?”

 

The phone vibrated almost angrily in his hand and he hated to even think of what was waiting for him if he answered. He could have Edgar and the time traveling group of pixelated kids, frogs, robots, and cave women, or he could talk to Dib.

 

“Yeah,” Johnny sighed. “Hang on, okay? I'm gonna put him on speaker.”

 

Edgar nodded and Johnny held the phone out in front of him. “Hello.”

 

“Johnny?” Dib's voice was nearly unrecognizable.

 

“Hi, Dib.”

 

“What is this stuff you gave me?”

 

Johnny blinked at Edgar, who shook his head and shrugged. “I have no idea what you're talking about, Dib.”

 

“This guy thinks he's _Satan_?”

 

“The son of, actually,” Edgar corrected.

 

“Oh, you're here too, good.” Even distorted, Dib's irritation was audible. “Did you put this guy up to this? Did I not stress to you the importance of this? That it was _alien_ tech, that I --”

 

“What's wrong with the video?” Edgar asked.

 

“Nothing!” Dib shrieked, and Johnny held his hand out at arm's length until the sound stopped reverberating. “The quality is _great_ , but _Satan_? I trusted you two, and if you're making fun of me --”

 

“We're not,” Johnny said. “It's what happened. I'll show you the key next time if you want.”

 

“But this-- this is--! This is ridiculous!”

 

“Ridiculous or not, it's what we have,” Edgar said. “Or are you going to start discounting evidence to prove your theories?”

 

“I – no. But this isn't what I was expecting, I'll need all new equipment for this, I'll need thermal cameras and geological surveys, and I don't even know if the readings this thing took will be relevant... I'll have to talk to the Hell Seekers forum! Do you know what they're like on Hell Seekers?!”

 

“I can only imagine,” Johnny deadpanned.

 

“What kinds of readings did it take?” Edgar asked. “I thought it was just recording.”

 

“It's designed to replicate an environment as much as is possible in a 3D rendering field. It uses readings like changes in temperature, ambient noise, noises the human ear cannot detect, colors, heat signatures, density of nearby objects... I'm still working on getting the full playback mechanism to operate.”

 

“So what, you'll just have a holographic projection of the world as seen from Edgar's neck?”

 

“Well, yes, he won't be in the final projection, and the visuals will be limited to what he was turned toward, but if we're hoping to learn more about that house, this is a good start. I just... Hell and Satan are not what it was looking for.”

 

“Think of it as a crispy alien world,” Edgar suggested. “And let us know when you have something.”

 

“It could take months,” Dib replied. “But I'll do it. I just need you two to promise me that this is legitimate.”

 

Johnny rolled his eyes, but before he could snap at Dib, Edgar leaned close to the receiver and spoke into it with alarming sincerity. “I promise. What you have is unrehearsed and, as far as I know, unaltered.”

 

At first, Johnny thought there was some static or feedback on the line, but it turned out that the inhuman screeching coming through his phone was Dib finally realizing what he had and letting it sink in. He had something supernatural and he made a supernatural sound of delight to match. Johnny hung up on his celebratory squealing before it ended. Edgar startled at the sudden movement.

 

“He'll call back if he wants something else.”

 

“Fair enough.”

 

Edgar turned back to the television and picked up the game controller. For two or three minutes, Johnny shouted suggestions at the screen as Edgar struggled with dinosaurs and robots.

 

And then the phone rang again.

 

Johnny fumbled for it while trying to watch the screen at the same time. When he looked at the display, there was no name, no phone number, not even an 'Unavailable' or 'Unknown Caller.'

 

“Huh.”

 

Edgar paused the game again and watched as Johnny answered the call. He would normally have ignored it, especially if it was possible it was Dib again, but something compelled him to answer.

 

 

“ _Use your evil, when you want”_

 

A song creaked through the tiny speakers and Johnny jerked the phone from his ear. Edgar dropped the controller and reached toward Johnny, stopping just short of touching him. Johnny told himself that it was just the motion required to put the phone on speaker again that caused him to lean forward just enough for Edgar's hand to land momentarily on his arm. 

 

“ _...in her summer clothes,_  
Like a transmission, on an empty channel, all lines are closed.  
Taking photographs, speaking slowly through the permanent waves  
The taste in her mouth that she read about earlier today  
  
This is happening for your pleasure, at your leisure  
Use your evil, when you want”

 

Johnny's throat tightened, but he tried to pretend nothing was happening. “Dib?”

 

No one responded from the phone, but the song continued to play.

 

“ __This is happening for your pleasure, at your leisure  
Use your evil, when you want  
  
When the night becomes, automatic sequence joining the day,  
Singing something new, someone else is sliding into your way.  
When a menthol hit, hooks a spatial girl in her summer clothes,  
Like a transmission, on an empty channel, all lines are closed.”

 

Edgar got closer and whispered, “Pepito?”

 

Though why he bothered whispering, Johnny didn't know. “Pepito!” Johnny shouted angrily into the phone while it continued to play, seemingly unaffected.

 

“ _Use your evil, when you want”_

 

It wasn't even that his phone was being hijacked, and it didn't matter who was doing it. It wasn't that it was interrupting the game. The thing that hit Johnny at his core and would not dislodge was that he felt the song was talking to him and that somewhere, in him or his three reflections, he might have a response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jeez, I'm not sure if it's even worth comparing the two versions of the story anymore. Though weirdly, a lot of what happens in the original SWAN 14 is in here, just in a different order and there are differences in who knows what. And it's from a different POV (yay, it's Johnny this time, that's exciting, yes?). Somewhat miraculously, though, the song is the same! I was never very fond of how it was used in the original, and this is more like how it should have been, so I'm pleased with that. 
> 
> Edgar and Johnny have a fight in both versions, but in the original it's more violent, and here it's sort of about two different issues and a bit more prolonged. Still, it's weird to see that the chapters share so many elements and yet can't be swapped out for each other or anything. Of course, in the original story, their relationship wasn't doing what it's doing here yet, which is pretty exciting for me. I'm finding a lot of real joy in letting the relationship do what it's doing so far. I considered holding it off the way I had the first time, but these two seemed to push for it earlier, and then it caused all sorts of other ripples that will be delightful/horrible, so I was even more excited to do it this way. (Don't worry, this will actually not be hideously prolonged!)
> 
> Other things that are exciting are being able to show that the ridiculous feelings really are mutual, and that Edgar has a bunch of things he likes and does. We see more of his hobbies, humor, and interests in this version of the story, and they're ones that make sense for a guy falling in love with a person as really fucking weird as Nny is. Which then make Nny reciprocating make more sense too!
> 
> Some references in this one that are fun:
> 
> -Edgar likes Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and his first crush was Jadzia Dax.   
> -Edgar and Johnny watch a movie called "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats." The bit that's described here is on YouTube.  
> -They also play Chrono Trigger  
> -QRB, the infomercial referenced in the original SWAN, makes a comeback here
> 
>  
> 
> As far as songs!  
> Johnny and Edgar sing a modified version of "A Little Priest" from Sweeney Todd together while they go visit Dib.   
> The song that haunts Johnny's phone is "Evil", by Ladytron.


	15. Somewhere To Hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny remembers a rabbit while celebrating Edgar's birthday.

 

During the time Johnny spent unconscious, Edgar truly felt how alone he was.

 

It wasn't just that his usual constant companion was out of commission because he was seeing or smelling or hearing or just violently reacting to something that did not exist, it was that he had no one he could express his trouble to. He couldn't tell anyone he was worried, there was no one outside the group that he could consult for advice. No one understood how strongly he felt for Johnny, no one knew he was suddenly thrust into the role of keeping Johnny mentally afloat and caring for him when the brain boat capsized.

 

He didn't resent doing it - it was actually somewhat touching to be trusted with it - but it was lonely.

 

Johnny mostly kept quiet about what had happened to him, especially as the episodes of remembering became more frequent. He'd seize up on some trivial detail of a show or a conversation, his fingers would crunch and contort themselves until they resembled claws, and he'd settle into a silent panic with a distant gaze in his eyes.

 

Edgar's only weapon against it was talking. Slowly and reassuringly, but firmly reminding Johnny of who and where they were. After a terrifying two or three minutes, Johnny would unlock, chest heaving, and then ask for something mundane, like orange juice or a Frooty Pop. In the time it took Edgar to go to the kitchen and back, Johnny would be fine and not at all interested in revisiting the incident.

 

“How are you?” Edgar could say.

 

“It's okay,” was usually the reply.

 

“Can I do anything else?”

 

“I don't think so.”

 

“Okay.”

 

And that was that. Edgar was used to ignoring things for Johnny, and supernatural musical phone calls had been only the start. Johnny struggled with abstract philosophical concepts as much as with plastic sporks. Completely innocent words shut him down or strained him until he could hide from anyone who wasn't Edgar. There was no way to predict them, and there was no pattern. Edgar's assumption was that it really was significant things from Johnny's past selves breaking through, and there was no way to know the tiny but important details of another person's life regardless of whether you'd been reincarnated from them or not.

 

Edgar couldn't bring himself to visit Pepito on his own to ask what he knew. He was afraid to be there without Johnny, and it was more difficult to be fearless without someone to be fearless _for_. So without that resource, he cataloged Johnny's episodes in the back of an old notebook: when they happened, for how long, what Johnny reported seeing if he'd talk about it, and what – if discernible – had triggered them. If Edgar couldn't talk about them, and couldn't stop them, he could watch their patterns, and he could learn to help Johnny through them. He was supposed to be making Johnny happy, right?

 

There was a lot of blood. There was enough that Edgar had to conclude that it was there for him too, and he was just not seeing it. There was no way Johnny saw so much of Edgar and so much blood and they never crossed paths. Edgar's past selves had always seemed so benign in the mirror, but now he imagined them standing next to Johnny's terrifying reflections and they no longer seemed so harmless.

 

Other than blackouts, or attacks, or whatever they were calling Johnny's experiences, the two of them functioned. There were bad movies and repetitive video games and stolen candy and music battles. They still caught themselves getting too close or joking too much or saying just one word too many, but there were days when Edgar found himself thinking he'd be content with what he had for a very long time. Tenna and Devi disapproved, though Tenna was the one delivering the message while Edgar continued to supervise her driving.

 

“So, hey, I'm just gonna come out and say this. You and Nny is a bad idea.”

 

“You've said. That was a stop sign.”

 

“Yeah, you've said.”

 

“You need to actually listen to stop signs.”

 

“And you need to listen to me and Devi.”

 

“You not listening to a stop sign can get you killed.”

 

Tenna shrugged and frowned at the road. “He already has you bleeding for him.”

 

The words dropped into his stomach like a stone. He didn't know what to say.

 

Jimmy's song was frequently too loud for Edgar to understand anything he said, but they were still able to play together. He couldn't bring himself to hate Jimmy, no matter how much Jimmy seemed to be angling for it. Something about Jimmy made Edgar sad. He suspected it was the same thing that made Johnny indulge Jimmy's song requests and ridiculous games.

 

They used the choir room to play, but only if Johnny could find ways to avoid his reflections. It went especially well on days when fundraisers had put signs all over the windows and reflections were less obvious. One day when it finally started feeling like spring, Edgar assumed reflection avoidance was what Johnny was doing when he stood up in the choir room one afternoon saying he'd be back in an hour or two.

 

“Where the fuck are you going?” Devi asked.

 

“To play with his other friends,” Tenna sighed sadly. “Satan and the techno boy next door.”

 

Johnny crossed his arms. “I have a project to do. I'll be back when it's done.”

 

Jimmy leaned forward in his chair. “Can we help?”

 

“No, it's kind of a one-person job. You wouldn't like it anyway.”

 

Edgar said nothing to him, but lately, he didn't need to. Johnny looked at him for only a second before he snickered and waved his arm dismissively. “I'm not, don't worry. I'm fine, trust me.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Okay.”

 

“There, there!” Tenna shouted, leaping from her chair and pointing frantically at Edgar. “Right fucking there, did you see it?!”

 

Edgar jumped back from his chair and immediately started brushing at his clothes. “What, whatwhat?! What's on me?!”

 

Devi bit her lip and then doubled over while letting out an exaggerated “HA!”

 

It was possible there was nothing on his clothes. “... Fuck, what?”

 

“Holy shit, Mom, I thought I was gonna piss myself for a second,” Devi said, wiping her eyes.

 

Tenna patted Devi's back but looked at Edgar. “Dude, I don't even know how you are real, you are fucking hilarious.”

 

Edgar sighed in irritation and dropped angrily back into his chair with his arms crossed over its back. “Will you just tell me what stupid thing I've done so I can be embarrassed now and move on instead of reliving it in quiet horror in a few hours?”

 

Jimmy and Johnny remained quiet. Edgar hoped it was for different reasons.

 

Tenna grinned and nearly spun in her chair with delight. “You did the 'Nny Mind Reading Thing' again! I keep telling Devi about how you do this in the van and she thinks I'm full of shit, but that was totally it.”

 

Suddenly, there was a piercing squeak and a yelp from Jimmy, and he was on the floor.

 

“Stop it,” Johnny told him, as though scolding a dog. He looked back at the others and spread his arms wide, bowing slightly as though he'd finished a performance. “Oh, look, I just read Jimmy's mind.”

 

Tenna straightened her crooked posture and moved like she was going to sit up. “Hey, what-”

 

“I'm going to do my thing now,” Johnny said firmly. “I'll see you guys in a little while.”

 

When the doors closed behind Johnny, the others slowly turned their accusing stares to Edgar.

 

“What?”

 

“What the hell was that?” Tenna demanded.

 

“I don't know, _he_ did it, not me.”

 

Tenna hauled Jimmy to his feet and he dusted himself off with her help. “It's fine,” he told her.

 

“Let me see, turn around.”

 

Jimmy sighed and turned in a circle, his arms spread wide. “Look, I'm fine.”

 

“Good, sit. What did he do to you?”

 

Jimmy shook his head. “It's fine, don't worry about it. We're cool.”

 

“If you want me to say something to him, I can --”

 

“How about / _never been hot enough_ /, Edgar.”

 

Edgar tried to hide his wince. He didn't know what Jimmy had said, but assumed it contained the word 'fuck' and meant 'no.' “Okay.”

 

Jimmy grinned, showing half his teeth as he ran his tongue over them. “You / _So start up the fire/,_ huh?”

 

“Stop it, Jimmy,” Devi said. She threw a gum wrapper that bounced off of Jimmy's hair. “You're not edgy, you're just being a dick.”

 

Edgar picked his head up, grateful for Devi's intervention. He'd have to ask Johnny how to handle hostile songs later.

 

Devi kicked his knee to get his attention. “So what's Nny's project?”

 

“I don't know, I haven't heard anything about a project.”

 

Tenna settled slowly back into her chair. “Oh. I... was definitely joking earlier about the visiting Satan and Alien Kid, sorry.”

 

“No, it's okay. He wouldn't visit either of them alone. He really must be doing something.”

 

On one hand, Edgar worried about what Johnny was up to and whether he'd be okay if he had some kind of memory attack doing it, and on the other, he was starting to feel like he was earning the title of 'Mom' even inside his own head.

 

_And 'Mom' is kind of not where I want to be with him..._

 

“Let's name the band while he's gone,” Jimmy said suddenly. He suggested this lately at every opportunity. Devi builds a bloody snowman? _'Let's name the band.'_ Tenna got food poisoning again? _'Let's name the band.'_ Edgar's ear got infected when Johnny pierced it with a thumbtack? _'Let's name the band.'_

 

Devi groaned. “We're not a band, Jimmy. We're a bunch of idiots playing music.”

 

Tenna tapped Devi's shoulder and then leaned in for a stage whisper. “They call that a band.”

 

Devi shoved her and she nearly toppled from her chair. “Fuck off. Even if we were a band, we wouldn't name ourselves without Nny. He'd throw a fucking tantrum, it's not worth it.”

 

Tenna flipped her chair around to sit with her legs straddling it and her arms resting on its back, her position now matching Edgar and Jimmy's. She grinned at Edgar, though he had no idea why, and then suddenly she blinked, startled, confused.

 

“Dev?” She didn't look away from Edgar, even as she tried to get Devi's attention.

 

Devi looked up from a silent but aggressive middle finger and snarling competition with Jimmy. “What now?”

 

Tenna sat up and nodded toward Edgar. “Do you hear anything from him?”

 

“I'm right here,” Edgar sighed.

 

Devi crossed her arms and titled her head to one side. “Huh.”

 

“Nothing,” Jimmy reported, not without some glee.

 

“Yeah, me neither,” Tenna said slowly. “I kind of thought, you know... by now, right?”

 

Devi nodded, emphatically 'hmm'ing all the while.

 

“Hellooo?” Edgar called.

 

“Sorry, sweetie,” Tenna said. “It's just weird.”

 

“It's literally no different from when you met me.”

 

“That's why it's weird,” Devi said. “I thought you woulda had enough time.”

 

Truthfully, Edgar thought he'd had enough time too.

 

Two hours and one kazoo serenade from Tenna later, Johnny returned, cheerful and bouncy and really almost unsettlingly normal, but would say nothing about his project. As Edgar and Johnny made their way through the alleys and backyards home after saying goodbye to the others, Edgar considered bringing up his song. If anyone could tell him something, it'd be Johnny. But Edgar had been warned that these songs were a touchy subject, and with his and Johnny's relationship a little strange, Edgar thought it best to wait until he had some good reason, some occasion where he'd be regarded well and might be able to get away with asking for something a bit personal.

 

Like his birthday in three days, perhaps.

 

 

Edgar's birthday had always been spent alone with several boxes of Funfetti cake batter and yearning in front of the television. This year, he knew people, and he specifically knew people who _liked_ him. He knew _Johnny_.

 

And Johnny liked cake and television and pizza and everything else that he and Edgar hauled from the basement to celebrate, but he also suggested they visit the school roof in the evening.

 

“I promise it's not to fuck with you,” Johnny said. “Trust me.”

 

Edgar didn't want to give in to having false hopes, he didn't want to put himself in situations that would make it worse, but... _Johnny._

 

“Okay, sure.”

 

They passed Jimmy's trailer on the way, as they always did. Usually, it was uneventful but for faint strains of Jimmy's song. Today, the door opened and Jimmy leaned out, as though he'd been expecting them, and screamed, “Happy Birthday, you fuck!”

 

“Thank you!”

 

Johnny laughed and waved at Jimmy, who huffed dramatically and slammed his door.

 

“That was unexpectedly nice of him,” Edgar observed as they continued on toward the school. “I mean, considering Jimmy, that was almost _warm and fuzzy._ ”

 

“Yeah, he's like that.”

 

“He's warm and fuzzy?”

 

“He's...” Johnny twirled his hands in front of him while he searched for the words. “He's kind of sappier than he lets on. He would probably actually really like you if he wasn't so fixated on me. He's probably fighting it.”

 

“Do we all go through a fixation on you?”

 

“Heh. You mean, am I a group-wide phase? Not that I know of. Just you and Jimmy so far. Though you're a little less aggressive about it.”

 

“Just a little?”

 

Johnny walked along the curb next to the school, balancing with his arms stuck out to his sides. The paint splattered messenger bag Devi and Tenna had made for him for one or all winter holidays bounced on his hip and the weight forced him to tilt to one side to compensate for it. “Okay, a lot. Jimmy's thing feels like he wants to eat me sometimes.”

 

“I... don't think we're thinking of the same thing.”

 

“Well, in a literal sense, I'm sure Jimmy doesn't _actually_ want to snack on my flesh, but it's kinda predatory, you know?” He shrugged as much as he was able while pivoting on the edge of the sidewalk. “There's a kind of consumption or owning going on there that is just not my thing.”

 

“You don't know _I'm_ not going to eat you.” It was the absolute weirdest thing to joke about, but it worked.

 

Johnny grinned at him. “Fair. But I totally _believe_ that you're not, so you're either not going to or you're like the world's most skilled vampire, in which case I'm frankly flattered by the effort you put into being pleasant and charming for an _entire fucking year_ without murdering me. So I will enjoy my false sense of security now, and come willingly later.”

 

_“Oh.”_

 

He wanted a sharp comeback about as badly as he suddenly wanted to be a vampire.

 

Johnny hopped off the curb and his key ring clattered on his hip. He left the ring attached to his tattered black jeans as he unlocked the school doors to get himself and Edgar up to the roof. He looked ridiculous, and yet that added to the charm.

 

When they finally stood on the roof, it was several degrees cooler than it had been on the ground, but was still pleasant. It was going to really start warming up again soon, and then their visits here would be more frequent. At least Edgar hoped so.

 

He breathed in the air and relished it, even if it was the same air he'd been breathing three stories down. Looking into the town, even with Pepito's house sitting perilously close, there remained a crisp peace about the place that nothing could ruin.

 

Behind Edgar, Johnny's bag crunched and then clinked as Johnny flipped the top closed and all the metal fastenings clattered against each other.

 

“Here, I got you something.”

 

When Edgar turned to look at him, Johnny held out a limp package wrapped in the comics page from a newspaper. It was light and soft in Edgar's hand.

 

“Oh, wow, thank you.”

 

“Maybe thank me after you've seen it.”

 

“It doesn't matter what it is.” He'd heard that hundreds of times on television, and knew it would sound cliché to Johnny, but _fuck_ did he ever mean it.

 

Johnny looked away and out over Pepito's house. He laughed a little and waved his hand at the gift in Edgar's hands. “So fucking open it, then.”

 

Edgar tore through the faces of cartoon dogs and political commentary and some soft fabric fell from the wrapping like he'd spilled the package's guts.

 

A shirt. Edgar unfurled it while Johnny pretended to be totally disinterested, though he wasn't as good at that particular skill as Devi. The blue shirt featured a painted version of the Loch Ness Monster's famous silhouette and the words, “I Hope I'm Not Fictional.”

 

“This is great!” He held it up in front of him, amazed that it even existed. It was incredibly specific to Edgar, something about the style of the art said 'Johnny', and Edgar's heart flipped in his chest. “Did you make this?”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny shrugged. “Sorry it's not a whole swimming pool.”

 

“No, no, I told you it didn't matter what this was, and it doesn't, but I _really_ love this. Plus, I – Well, I've never gotten a birthday gift that wasn't from a basement before. So, thank you, really. It's _fantastic.”_

 

Johnny shook his head and tried to shrug everything off. “You're welcome. Happy Birthday.”

 

Edgar couldn't stop smiling. Sure, this was the same stuff Johnny would have done for any of their friends, but they wouldn't have been sharing it on the roof, which was few layers of perfect – the light from the streetlamps below, the separation from the rest of the world, the breeze, the stars, and the obvious peace it brought Johnny.

 

Though that they were still coming here, still spending all this time alone, even though they'd both decided to avoid the issue...

 

“This is weird, isn't it?”

 

Johnny's shoulders relaxed and he looked directly at Edgar, finally. There was a lie all over his face as he turned his head– he was about to pretend he didn't know what Edgar meant – but it melted away when Edgar made eye contact.

 

“Yeah. This isn't really working, is it?”

 

_'Working' to make Edgar like him less? To make them both act as though there was nothing there? To fool anyone else into thinking so?_

 

“Not really.” He tried to keep it light, laughing. Not pointing or assigning blame, just there.

 

“I didn't know if this would be fucking with you or not --” and Johnny motioned toward the shirt. “-- but I kinda thought it'd be okay because it's your birthday.”

Edgar raised an eyebrow. “To fuck with me?”

 

Johnny frowned and sounded almost angry, but it was directed at himself. “No, no. I meant to give you the - I meant this whole _thing._ ”

 

For something allegedly keeping him alive, Edgar's heart was doing a lot of stopping his breath and pounding his blood so hard it made him certain he was hurtling toward death. “Do you mean-?”

 

Johnny plowed ahead as though he hadn't heard Edgar say anything. “It's still _so much_ though, it's going to be a fucking mess, and I just keep thinking this would all be so much easier if someone would just switch me off and fix me.”

 

“I-”

 

“I _know_ you want to help, I know. But it's like – I keep thinking: If I do that, then am I making it worse?”

 

Edgar blinked. It was possible he wasn't hearing everything, but he wasn't sure Johnny was making sense. “Um, no?”

 

“I think you're being optimistic.”

 

“Maybe you should tell me what you think will get worse, and how, and then I can try to answer you.”

 

Johnny bit his lip and looked at Pepito's roof. His lips barely moved and he breathed his words so they sounded like a dying echo, “...switch me off and fix me.”

 

“Uh-oh.” Edgar hung the shirt over his shoulder to free up his hands for an emergency. _No, please not now. Not up here._ “Nny, you-”

 

“Do you remember me having a pet?”

 

Edgar shook his head. “I don't. But you told me you-”

 

“I had-” Johnny winced. “There was a rabbit.”

 

“That sounds cute.” Then Edgar stopped himself. “... _is_ it cute?”

 

“It talked to me. But only after it died.”

 

 _Fuck._ More of this. Of course there were hints that the prior version of Johnny had not been exactly stable, but Edgar had hoped they were misleading or at least the worst of it. After current Johnny had a problem with those weird baking mascots because of prior Johnny, he'd avoided any aisles in grocery stores where baking supplies might be found. It was now looking rapidly like they might have to avoid pet stores and Easter candy too.

 

Edgar didn't want to believe that Johnny had been mad. It made the blood harder explain away and it cast Edgar (or some version of him) in an uncomfortable light. If Johnny talked to dead things, and things that were never alive to start with...

 

The worst part was the talking back. He hated asking, but –

 

“How did it die?”

 

“I can't-- I can't remember, it's – Fuck, Edgar, I can't do all of this, I can't. Something's going to give.” Johnny's shoulders heaved and he wheezed just a little.

 

Edgar gripped the gifted shirt tightly with one hand, desperate to hold onto something because he couldn't do it to Johnny. “Hey, hey, breathe, all right? It'll be okay, just-”

 

“ _Okay?_! Nothing is _okay!_ There are other people – sick, fucked up, destroyed shreds of people – living in my head like fucking _parasites_!” Johnny gasped for breath and clawed at the cord tied around his neck. “They're gonna manifest in _me_ and not the mirror soon, and then what? Where will the sane me go?”

 

 _Stay calm, stay calm_. “You're not going anywhere. That you can even ask that question is good, it -”

 

“I'll probably just project myself onto – oh. Oh, fuck.”

 

“Nny, I think-”

 

“It was alive.”

 

Edgar swallowed and released his hold on the shirt. “Okay, I think we need to step away from the edge a little, come on.” He held out an arm to guide Johnny back, but was careful not to touch him.

 

Johnny's hand trembled as he held it near his mouth. “It was _alive_! I bought a rabbit, fed it once, and then _nailed it to a wall!_ _ALIVE!”_

 

“No, no, you didn't. _He_ did.” Even as his guts screamed at him to panic, Edgar's voice remained steady and calm.

 

“It doesn't _matter!”_ Johnny ran his hands over his head and through his hair. His eyes were unfocused, wildly glancing. “I don't even know which 'he' did it! Edgar, you were fucking _friends_ with me and I nailed a live rabbit to a wall! I had conversations with it! It was me!”

 

“Do you want it to have been you?”

 

“No!”

 

“Then it wasn't. It's okay. It must be horrible to remember, but we'll get you through this like everything else. I – ” _Is this too much? Is he going to think I'm pushing this thing? Fuck._ “I'm here. I'll help. I'm not going anywhere.”

 

“You don't – you don't fucking get it, you--” Johnny squeezed his eyes shut, hunched his shoulders, and let out a strained moaning scream.

 

“I do get it, I do, it's okay.” Edgar's hands shook as he suppressed the urge to reach out. He'd hoped he'd be useful, he'd hoped he'd be a source of strength, he'd hoped he could do more to help than just be present and spout vaguely inspiring things gleaned from television while mentally making a note to add this freakout to the calendar. How long was just calmly talking going to last? “Listen, if you feel that they are developed enough to influence you, then you should be able to influence them. You aren't powerless here, you never have been.”

 

“You don't fucking know that, you --”

 

“Then you don't know either.”

 

“I--”

 

And here Johnny's expression melted into desperation, his voice cracked and he threw his arms around Edgar's neck, collapsing against him, shoulders trembling.

 

Several seconds passed before Edgar risked settling his hands over Johnny's back and shoulders.

 

“I don't know what to do,” Johnny said into Edgar's shoulder.

 

“Neither do I.” Though Edgar suspected they were now talking about different things.

 

Johnny had never done anything like this. Edgar had never seen him hug anyone, for any reason. Until the rabbit, he'd also never remembered anything specifically violent. Now here he was confronting Edgar with both of those things at once.

 

“I can hear the sound it made,” Johnny moaned.

 

“I'm sorry. It must be awful.”

 

“I can't—”

 

“Listen to something else, listen to me. You and I are right here, and you have – here!” Edgar tugged at the headphones around Johnny's neck and the slow and soothing - if slightly mournful or eerie – strains of a song Johnny was very fond of were audible. “You have that sea song playing.”

 

Johnny sniffed, but said nothing.

 

Edgar had run out of new words, but kept trying. “It will be okay.”

 

“It won't.” Johnny shook his head as he stepped back enough to look into Edgar's face. “But I almost believe it when _you_ say it.”

 

Edgar smiled at him, or tried to. On one hand, no one had ever hugged him before and the person he'd have most liked to hug had done it. But Johnny was also remembering casual baby animal abusing horror. If ever there was a time to ask about the status of their relationship, it would have been during a hug after a hinting conversation and birthday gifts. If ever there was a time _not_ to ask, it would have been while remembering murdering small animals.

 

It _would_ be Edgar and Johnny who experienced both of those things at the same time.

 

“Sorry,” Johnny said suddenly. He pulled away, though he left his hands entwined together behind Edgar's neck, causing the same familiar heat and burning in Edgar's shoulders, neck and cheeks.

 

“Don't be,” Edgar managed. “None of this is your fault.”

 

“Not that. You just looked kinda... stuck. I didn't mean to make things weird.”

 

Edgar laughed and felt himself smile. “It's just _a little_ weird. But it's okay as long as you are. It's, um - It's just, you know, no one's ever hugged me before, so...”

 

“Oh.” Johnny blinked and looked back and forth between his elbows.

 

“Are you going to be all right?”

 

Johnny's head dropped and he sighed. “Am I ever?”

 

“You are. Don't let the other two make you think that you aren't.”

 

“You – you know I'm not totally okay, though, right? This hasn't magically escaped you in some kind of infatuated delusion?”

 

Edgar nodded. “I'm aware. I think I always have been. But you're not as broken as the last two.”

 

“Oh, well, that makes it all okay then.”

 

“Sorry. I mean that as positively as possible. I _like_ you. I like you the way you are, and the way you were and have been, and probably the way you will be too. It's okay with me, I just want to help.”

 

Johnny blinked at him. “Where do you get that shit?”

 

Edgar shrugged, risking drawing attention to the location of Johnny's arms. “It just comes out. One romantic comedy too many, maybe.”

 

“One _is_ too many.”

 

“...You are not wrong.”

 

“So, what is this?” Johnny shrugged and the motion carried through his arms.

 

“Failed supernatural romantic comedy of errors?”

 

Johnny laughed, shaking his head, eyes closed. The dark under his eyes was accentuated by the light from below. He should have looked a bit scary. Maybe he _did_ look scary. Maybe Edgar _liked_ scary.

 

“Are you okay with this?” Edgar raised one shoulder, bouncing Johnny's arm on it. Johnny stared at his arm like he'd just then realized he had it.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Does it... does it mean what I think it does, or...?”

 

“I told you I wouldn't fuck with your head.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Well, yeah, but I think that in extreme circumstances, emergency hugs are fine, no implication attached. I'd be kind of dick to tell you that this was fucking with me and make it all about me when you're, um. Well.”

 

“Remembering conversations with desiccated rabbit heads.”

 

Edgar licked his lips and nodded. “Right.”

 

“I'm still okay. With this, I mean, not in general. There's just some shit that comes with this if we're gonna do it. You should be sure this is really what you want.”

 

Edgar's heart began to race immediately and air suddenly felt very scarce. “Can I just – I can't imagine anything being enough of a deterrent, and if you'd really wanted something to be, you'd have told me a long time ago to scare me off.”

 

“I didn't _want_ to scare you off, I – ” Johnny shook his head and started again. “I don't know. You're smart enough to know this is complicated. It was just that I was hearing a fucking rabbit scream in my head and all I could think to make it feel better was... doing this.”

 

“Did it work?”

 

Johnny nodded. “Yeah.”

 

Edgar brought his hands up above Johnny's waist, careful not to touch him. “May I...?”

 

“Yeah,” Johnny said, though he tensed briefly.

 

Edgar settled his hands gently just at the bottom of Johnny's ribs. He could feel more of them than he suspected was normal. Johnny didn't flinch, and even weakly smiled. He sounded tired, and like he'd been coughing. “I need you to listen to this, though, okay?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“So, you know I'm not a super romancey person.”

 

“Yeah, that's fine.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “You can't say it just like that, it's not – You know we're the only people right now, but if we – if someone sees us, you might want to consider other options, because --”

 

“Are you kidding? Why would I want anyone else?”

 

“That's... sweet or something, I think, but --”

 

“I mean it.”

 

“Do you think you might want to sleep with someone, ever?” Johnny challenged. He sounded more desperate than angry. “You think you might want to use easy language like ' _boyfriend_ ' to describe this? Because that's not likely with me. And if you think this thing we're doing is going to change it, or you're just planning on me growing out of it or some shit, then you are damn wrong, I am not changing me for anyone, not even you, as much as I like you, and --”

 

“No, no, no, stop. It's okay. I don't want to change anything about you. You do what you do now, and I'm great. If you change, it should be because you want to, and I'll adapt. I hope you'd do the same thing for me, and we're fine.”

 

Johnny dropped his head and bumped his forehead on Edgar's shoulder. A second passed with Edgar's heart in his throat, and then, thankfully, he heard Johnny laughing.

 

“Man, fuck you.”

 

Laughter bubbled out of Edgar, whether it was appropriate or not. “What? What did I do?”

 

“There's no way you learned that from TV.”

 

“Of course not. I learned it from you.”

 

“No, you did fucking not.” He picked up his head. “You'd be a raging asshole if you learned from me.”

 

“If you say so. But it sounds good, doesn't it?”

 

“It does, it does. If I were the romancey sort, I'd be swooning like some fucking damsel right now.”

 

“Let's avoid that. I can do supernatural blackouts. I don't know what to do with romantic swooning.”

 

“If I ever swoon, please just murder me.”

 

“I'll try. Cut off the femurs, right?”

 

Johnny hugged him. Not a desperate suffering hug looking for an anchor to reality, but a real hug. “Yeah. Take apart at the joints.”

 

Edgar hugged him back. Johnny was bony and small and he smelled like the basement and weird hair dye and possibly cherry Freezie and he was _incredible._ “Got it.”

 

Under Edgar's hands Johnny's chest slowly expanded, shifted, shrunk back down, and just in front of his ear, Johnny's breath sailed by Edgar's skin. When he stepped back, the moment caught, and they stared at each other. There was an opportunity here, probably, but Johnny had done so much today...

 

They'd have time. Now that they were something together, anything was really possible. Maybe.

 

“Are we okay?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny shrugged. “Pfft. Fuck if I know. My 'okay' barometer was jacked up years ago, I think. You have to stop asking me about 'okay.'”

 

“Is it... jeez, sorry about this. I feel ridiculous.”

 

“About which part?” Johnny laughed. “Everything we are is ridiculous.”

 

“Just, no one has ever dealt with this on TV, so I have no frame of reference for – Have you ever seen anyone ask for this kind of stuff on TV? No one says, 'Can we hug?', 'Oh, can I hold your hand?' or 'Hey, can I kiss you now?' or whatever. That shit just happens, like they're all magnetic and psychic.”

 

Johnny smirked and raised and eyebrow. “That was an impressively roundabout way to ask me that stuff on the heels of crazy. Kudos.”

 

“Jeez, no, no, I didn't – that wasn't –.” Edgar stopped flailing his hands, took a breath and adjusted his glasses. “You've been through some shit. I wouldn't ask unless I thought you were okay.”

 

“I look forward to you actually asking, then.”

 

 _“Do_ you?”

 

Johnny shrugged and twirled away from him. “Yeah, it should be creative if that was what not asking looked like.”

 

“Fuck, can – can we just pretend I asked one of those, then?”

 

“Which one?”

 

“Either.”

 

“Nice try.”

 

Edgar held his arms over his chest as though he could hold feelings in if he squeezed hard enough. “Then both, okay? I'm asking about both. I know it's romancey shit, but they're not sexual shit, right? I wouldn't even – I mean –“

 

Johnny laughed as though he hadn't just had a past life break into his head minutes before. He laughed like people in commercials and in movies about Christmas. He laughed like he was _okay._

 

“You're fantastic, I hate you.”

 

“Thank you, but that is worryingly not an answer.”

 

“It's not as creative as I'd hoped, but _yes.”_

 

Edgar blinked. “Which one?”

 

Johnny grinned at him, barely containing more laughter, slightly predatory. A bit scary. A bit amazing. “Either.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“Sorry, that's not on offer.”

 

Edgar narrowed his eyes. “You're enjoying making this as awkward as possible on purpose, aren't you?”

 

“Fuck yes, I am.”

 

“You're horrible.”

 

Johnny linked his hands behind his back and leaned forward. “That really only calls your tastes into question. I embraced horrible a long time ago. Are you prepared to face being into horrible people?”

 

“I'm not into horrible _people_ , so far it's just a horrible _person_.”

 

“Oh. Well, never mind then. That _definitely_ changes my entire argument.”

 

“You told me you were an asshole within days of us meeting. I knew – I _know_ what I'm getting into. I'm still asking to do stupid shit like kiss you.”

 

Johnny took a step closer and held out his hand. “As long as you're aware of how phenomenally fucked up you are.”

 

“I can't even begin to care.”

 

As Johnny's hand settled into his, Edgar held out his other hand. Johnny smirked at the gesture, but gave Edgar both hands.

 

“You're pushing the romancey boundary here, my friend,” Johnny joked.

 

“Can I still kiss you?”

 

“Wow, this is a guy who knows his priorities,” Johnny announced to an invisible audience.

 

“You can say no instead of stalling. Just tell me what you want to do.”

 

Johnny blinked and his posture sank a little. “... and this is a guy who knows me unsettlingly well.”

 

“That makes me a decent candidate for kissing then, doesn't it?”

 

Johnny laughed so hard he almost doubled over and Edgar nearly lost his grip on Johnny's hands.

 

“I'm pretty sure it was not that funny,” Edgar said cautiously.

 

“It wasn't,” Johnny wheezed. He stood tall again and grinned. “But you're right. So you should probably just do this kissing nonsense before I find everything too hilarious to function.”

 

“It's probably only going to get funnier.”

 

“Is it?”

 

Rather than let Johnny keep prompting more delays, Edgar leaned in and hoped he wasn't about to do something devastating.

 

It was possible neither of them breathed for a few seconds, and then it really hit Edgar what was happening. It was indeed a kiss, though it was not mind blowing or especially great. In fact, it was kind of awkward. Johnny pulled away from him almost the second Edgar realized he could still breathe, but he didn't go far.

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar said quickly. “I've never done this before.”

 

“Yeah, no shit.”

 

Edgar squeezed his eyes shut and wished himself even more invisible than he already was. “Fuck, sorry. This is always so elegant on TV.”

 

“I remain not television.” He was still smiling, and still very close.

 

“I know, I know.”

 

“It's okay, just – here.” Johnny pressed two fingers against Edgar's jaw, just to the side of his chin and pulled down gently. “Just open your mouth a bit more.”

 

“I didn't think you --”

 

“Just a sec.”

 

Johnny pressed their lips together again, and this time hummed a bit, and definitely did not pull away. Edgar's skin burned and prickled as it had any time Johnny made some significant connection. The heat from it lingered on the back of his neck, under his ears, and spilled into his cheeks. He'd expected to burst into flame if this ever happened and that he didn't now was almost a let down. Sure, the kiss was pleasant enough, and Edgar spent a good deal of brain power on hoping he wasn't doing something horrible, but his idea of a kiss turned out to be better than the reality, no matter how much his skin burned in response to it.

 

What was better, and what did matter was what he could feel in his chest, what he could sense, what he could _hear._ It used to be that he thought heartbeats might be fake, and now he could hear and feel nothing else. His own, Johnny's, he wasn't sure, but the strength of it overpowered him trying to decide what to do with his hands, drowned out any thought he might have of this being good, or bad, or too soon, or too much, or –

 

Or over.

 

He wasn't aware he'd closed his eyes until he was afraid to open them.

 

Johnny glanced at him, and then immediately looked away and took a step back. He tried to laugh, but it was weak. “Sorry, I – I wanted to just do it before I talked myself out of it.”

 

Edgar caught himself trying to make a note of approximately how open his mouth had been for future reference and really wanted to smack himself. “I hope you didn't feel like you had to force yourself.”

 

“No, no, that's not what I meant.”

 

“Good. Good.” Edgar swallowed, nodded, and his heart relented somewhat in its attempts to deafen him. “I didn't think open mouths would be okay with you. That's what I was going to say before.”

 

Johnny still wouldn't look at him and shook his head. _How bad was it?_ “Just keep your tongue away from me or you won't have one anymore. I don't think I'm capable of liking anyone that much.”

 

“I don't want to anyway.”

 

“Then we'll be fine.”

 

Edgar heard Tenna and Devi disapproving so vehemently in his head that they may as well have been screaming at him from the sidewalk below. Worse yet, his mental pictures of Devi and Tenna told him this had all been done too fast and in too much of an emotional cluster, he was agreeing with them.

 

He wanted more than anything for all this to continue, he wanted to hold it, he wanted to keep it safe from anything that could break it and be thrilled that he had it. But if it was also the only thing he could ever have, he had to make sure it was solid from the start.

 

“Listen,” Edgar said, and took a deep breath. “This is amazing, _you_ are amazing, but if this is too much, or you want to take it all back tomorrow when you've had time to sleep or something, I understand.”

 

“No, no, it's fine.” Johnny tugged at one of his gloves and stared out over the town.

 

“I just want you to be doing this because you want to, not because you panicked and now you you feel like you have to stick with it to save face.”

 

Johnny put his hands over his face and then pulled them down and dropped them to the roof's stone wall as he looked into the sky. “I seriously need to know where you're getting this stuff. You can't be learning that from television.”

 

“Maybe it's another me, then. Does it matter? I want you to be okay, and -” He sighed and bit his lip for a second. “I keep using 'okay', I'm sorry, I don't have another word for it. I just don't want to do _damage._ I don't want to put extra stress on you, so if all this just happened because things boiled over and you think you'll regret it, I'll survive, and we can try again later.”

 

Johnny said nothing. He slid his palm across the stone toward Edgar.

 

“It's really okay,” Edgar reassured him.

 

For a half second, Johnny looked right at him, and after that half second he pulled Edgar's face down and kissed him with considerably more force than the first time. It wasn't a sloppy mess, it was not even very long, but it was powerful.

 

Johnny's eyes were scrunched shut when he broke the kiss, and his hands stayed balled into fists near the back of Edgar's neck.

 

“I came up here to do this.” Johnny's voice caught in his throat a little.

 

“You came up here to kiss me?” The planet frankly felt like it was spinning too quickly and that he was significantly further up in the atmosphere than he ought to be. If Johnny had let the kiss go on, Edgar may have passed out from euphoric delirium.

 

“No, not exactly, but I was trying to – This isn't because of Nail Bunny, okay?” _Fuck, the dead rabbit has a name._ “This isn't because I panicked or something. I thought maybe I wanted to do this when I made you the shirt. I thought I'd tell you we could try when we came up here, and then I remembered Nail Bunny, and I couldn't do both things. I was trying to keep that shit out and trying to stop myself from giving a fuck about you at the same time and then you had to go and be all... not television, and I just didn't have the energy to keep it all up anymore.”

 

He took a long breath and relaxed. His fists unclenched, and his eyes opened and Johnny looked Edgar in the eyes properly. “So, no, I didn't mean to come up here and _kiss you_ , but I was planning to do _something,_ so you aren't taking advantage of my horrible cocktail of 'churning teenage emotion and animal murder' either. I'm bad at 'okay', but with you, I'm as 'okay' as I can get.”

 

Edgar titled his head down almost more from emotional exhaustion than an attempt at closeness. He rested his forehead against Johnny's and tried to process what he was hearing, what he was feeling. Most of him, however, was too overloaded to generate a response with the necessary emotional depth. The only part of him that still had the capacity to react made him start to laugh deep in his chest.

 

Johnny moved like he was preparing to back away in alarm and then Edgar's laugh burst out of him with such force he squeezed Johnny against him as a reflex reaction. He laughed so hard he felt his eyes tearing up and his ribs cramping.

 

“Oh my god,” he choked out between bursts of laughter, “Jimmy is going to _kill_ me.”

 

Johnny froze for a moment and then Edgar felt him start to laugh too. They laughed together, holding each other up while they tried to stop nearly convulsing.

 

“You are _so fucked_ ,” Johnny hissed through laughter as he wiped one of his eyes with the back of his hand.

 

“Right? It's like you kissed me in order to ensure me a swifter demise!”

 

Johnny cackled his way through, “Happy Birthday, you doomed fuck, I got you kiss of death!” and the laughter renewed itself again and lasted several minutes until they were both wheezing.

 

They stepped away from each other, trying to catch their breath and not topple off the roof.

 

“Wow.” Edgar let out a large puff of air and quickly cleaned the lens of his glasses with the hem of his shirt. “It shouldn't be this funny, I just can't really process anything else.”

 

“He really is gonna be pissed.” Johnny laughed or coughed, but he was coming down from the hysteria.

 

“Do we need to play an elaborate game to hide it from him now?” Edgar was certain he'd seen that play out on television before, and even though he wasn't television, he had to check.

 

“I don't know. I don't know what happens now at all, honestly. This is all kind of a blur.”

 

Edgar winced. “I'm so sorry. I really shouldn't have asked about any of this so soon after the rabbit thing.”

 

“I just told you it's fine. I would have said no if I hadn't been planning it myself.” He looked down at his hands, flipping them back to front a few times. “Shitty way for all that to happen, though. I had planned better.”

 

“Was it just making the shirt that changed your mind?” Edgar pulled it off of his shoulder to look at the design again.

 

“Maybe. I just kept thinking about _not_ thinking about Pepito. Without him, and without this shit in my head, I liked the idea of this. Or of you. Something like that.”

 

“Fuck, I'm so glad.”

 

Johnny shrugged and wrung his hands.

 

Edgar draped the shirt back over his shoulder. “Sorry. You're not like me about this stuff, huh?”

 

“Probably not. Are you the kid who dreamed about getting married and fairy tales and stuff?”

 

“Maybe a little.”

 

“Then yeah. Not like you.” He startled a bit and added quickly, “Still fine! Still want to! Just, this is not the way I see myself. I don't kiss people in fits of emotion. Or, like, ever. At all. This is weird for me.”

 

“I'll do what I can to make it not weird?”

 

Johnny shoved Edgar's shoulder. “Heh, yeah, of course you will. I'll cope, just don't slobber on me.”

 

Edgar sighed dramatically. “Well, that ruins all my plans for the night.”

 

“Jimmy once tried to lick my neck. You should ask him how that turned out for him.”

 

“You mean when I tell him I've been on the roof kissing you?”

 

Johnny snickered. “Maybe we should start with Devi and Tenna.”

 

“Sure.”

 

With the warmth from the kiss and the laughter wearing off, the chill of the evening finally settled into Edgar's skin.

 

“Do you want to head back?”

 

“Yeah. It's colder up here than I thought it would be.”

 

Edgar pulled open the door to take them back into the school and then held out his hand. “What do you think?”

 

Johnny shook his head, smiling, and put his hand in Edgar's. “Am I checking off every box in your preteen dating fantasy yet?”

 

“Still no spots, but you'll do.”

 

Johnny offered him a casual middle finger while singing 'fuck you very much' to the tune of 'I Love Belarus.'

 

Edgar tugged him through the doorway away from the school's long windowed bridge, and down the flights of stairs. Johnny's hand was solid, and real, and actually wrapped around Edgar's in _Real Life, On Purpose_. He hadn't expected it to be just as exciting as kissing him, but he delighted in it and he could have walked a thousand miles holding Johnny's hand.

 

But when they turned around after Johnny locked the last school door behind them, Todd was standing on the sidewalk.

 

“Whoa!” Johnny jumped and briefly tightened his grip on Edgar's hand. “What are you doing here? I didn't think he ever let you leave the porch.”

 

“Keep it down,” Todd said, holding his hands up in a 'hush' gesture. “I don't want him to come over here and bother you, I just came to see if --” He looked at their hands and bit his lip. “Did he talk to you?”

 

Johnny looked down at their hands. “Yeah, but --”

 

“Yes,” Edgar interrupted. “But he's going to need to be more specific for it to matter. And even then it still might not.”

 

With Johnny's hand clasped tightly in his, Edgar felt Johnny's pulse climb. At least he thought it was Johnny's.

 

“This is the weirdest problem there could have been with all this,” Todd sighed.

 

“What is _'all this_ '?” Johnny asked. “Why won't you guys just tell us what's going on? I'm obviously up to my fucking eyeballs in it by now, whatever it is isn't going to scare me.”

 

“You're actually not,” Todd said. “Or at least not yet. And it'd be really better for you if you weren't, so he's trying not to get you too stuck in it. You're going to think I'm crazy, but he's actually trying to protect you.”

 

Johnny frowned. “Forgive me if I err on the side of 'Squee is Crazy'.”

 

Todd shrugged. “Okay. You know what, though? Before? The you I knew when I was little? He would have believed me.”

 

_Oh shit._

 

“Nny, we should – ”

 

Johnny didn't let go of Edgar's hand, but he resisted the tugging.

 

“Fuck, you too? Not just Pepito? Fuck, Squee, shit, you can help me.”

 

“Oh no.  No, no, no, nononono.” Todd backed away. “That's going to make it worse. You're so much better off now.”

 

“It's coming in anyway!” Johnny screamed. “Edgar talks to me, and I see blood! I go to a taco place, and I see blood! Freezies, baking mascots, random ass words, fucking _chihuahuas,_ Squee, it's all _blood!_ ”

 

Todd grimaced. “I can't, I can't, I can't. You look like you're better now, I just can't--”

 

“This isn't _better!_ This is actively getting _worse!_ Squee – _Todd_ – please just fucking tell me what all this shit is so it's over with!”

 

“I'm sorry, I can't. I won't. If there's any chance of you not remembering completely, I'm not going to ruin it.”

 

“Fuck you and your warnings, then! Get the fuck out of here!”

 

Todd nodded like he'd expected this. “Fine. You should probably do the same thing.  Just go somewhere else. I think you'd be happier.”

 

“Fuck you. You don't know what would make me happy.” Johnny pulled on Edgar's hand as he angrily turned toward home.

 

Edgar looked over his shoulder and saw Todd shrug sadly.

 

 

 

 

When Johnny hauled them through the front door, they were still holding hands, and Johnny was breathing erratically.

 

“He fucking knows. He knows what's in my head, he knows what's coming for me.”

 

“But he thinks there's a chance you'll never remember it all. This could be as bad as it gets.”

 

“I don't want to leave it like this, Edgar. I'd rather just know.”

 

“Really? And what if it's really horrible? What if it's _you_? Would you want to know you were the cause of the blood?”

 

Johnny swallowed once and then stared at him. “You think I haven't been thinking that? You think I don't dream about it? It _has_ to be me, Edgar. _I'm_ the cause of the blood, I _have_ to be.”

 

“Did you remember that?”

 

“No, but what else makes sense?! I'm not a fucking vampire or the world's unluckiest bastard, I was doing what I did to the rabbit, just... to people. A lot of people. All I have to do now is wait for my head to confirm it.”

 

“But--”

 

“But what? But then that makes _you_ a bad person too, right? Worried about this?” He raised their clasped hands up between their faces, challenging. “Does this still look appealing to you? This was why I couldn't, this was why I didn't want to, this was why--”

 

“Yes!”

 

Johnny stopped, and blinked at him. “What?”

 

Edgar squeezed his hand. “It does still look appealing to me. I still want this. You haven't done anything. What kind of garbage would I be to decide how I felt about you based on what someone else did?”

 

“I don't think you understand. If I remember doing this stuff, then I'm going to _be_ the person who did this stuff.”

 

“That's not true.”

 

“You don't know what's _in here_ , Edgar! You don't see things the way I do! No one does!”

 

“Nny, even if remembering everything they did makes you partly them, you're not going to erase everything you've done _now._ They'll affect you – they do already – but so does breaking into a swimming pool and kissing weird dorks on school rooftops. You can't ever be entirely _them_ again because you've done so much being _you._ ”

 

Johnny looked angry with him and, for a few seconds, Edgar thought he'd ruined everything. Johnny kept his hold on Edgar's hand, however.

 

“I think – I think I need to sleep,” Johnny muttered.

 

“It would do us both some good, I think.” Considering how poorly Johnny slept in general, it was remarkable to hear him talking about needing some.

 

“Thanks for the...” Johnny flailed his arms a bit. “The head help, I guess. Sorry I fucked some shit up on your birthday.”

 

Edgar shook his head. “No, some other people fucked up. You were great.”

 

Johnny smiled at him, took a step backwards, and dropped into one of his theatrical bows. “I do try.”

 

What Edgar wanted was just to stand at the bottom of the stairs with him forever, but Johnny slipped his hand out of Edgar's grip.

 

“Good night, okay?” Johnny took two stairs and then looked back over his shoulder. “I'm glad you liked the shirt.”

 

“It's amazing.”

 

“Good. I'll see you in the morning.” Johnny laughed weakly and turned to go up the rest of the stairs, but Edgar grabbed his hand again.

 

“Hang on, I – I just want know... Will _this-”_ He squeezed Johnny's hand. “-still be here in the morning?”

 

Johnny blinked at their hands as though he was still processing the image of them being linked. He glanced up from their hands and met Edgar's eyes. “Will _you_ be here in the morning?”

 

“I plan on it?”

 

“Then so will this.”

 

 

 

 

 

He was sure he needed to, but Edgar could not sleep. Instead, his mind spun through everything that had happened, worried about it, analyzed it, replayed it, and turned it around at several odd angles. He turned over and over in the bed, rearranged his pillows and tried getting rid of them entirely, but nothing could stop even his smallest concerns, let alone the overwhelming combination of fear and elation. An hour or two into the increasing panic-joy spiral, there was a kind of fuzzy sound in the hallway. Grateful for some kind of concrete distraction, he slipped out to investigate and found it was Johnny's buzzing sea song again, the same one he'd been playing in his headphones while they were on the roof. The song had a way of easing you into a near auditory overload before backing off at just the right time.

 

Just as that song faded away, another abruptly started that made the speakers sound broken.

 

 

 _“Summer follow us, we're on the run tonight_  
_So light the fuse, hold me close, too young to lose._  
_Just like a dream, running against the wind with no regrets,_  
_Leave behind our innocence._  
  
_And he said "listen, listen,_  
_I'm not afraid to go if it's with you,_  
_I was born to live for you"_  
_And I'm like Juliet, waiting to see the sunset on the rise,_  
_No goodbyes, I'd rather die._

_So let's dance across the line,_  
_Say your love is mine.”_

 

Johnny probably did not know that Edgar couldn't sleep either, he was just the sort to play music because he felt like it, fuck everyone else, but Edgar was happy to pretend he was unaware.

 

 

“ _We'll find somewhere to hide, we'll stay out of sight_  
_Until we know everything is alright._  
_Baby, just keep searching, you're safe_  
_Don't worry, we'll find somewhere to hide.”_

 

 

He wasn't there long, but he spent a memorable portion of his night sitting at the top of the stairs listening to Johnny's playlist for a night after kissing and recollected rabbit murder drift through his bedroom door. He probably should have been more concerned about how the evening had played out, about kissing and dead rabbits, about Jimmy and dead Edgars, but he felt like he'd burned out on concern several hours ago.

 

Maybe something bad was coming for Johnny from inside his own head, or from Todd and Pepito, or maybe just from Jimmy's misplaced rage, but on the stairs at two in the morning the night after his birthday and a first kiss, Edgar did not care.

 

 

“ _we'll find somewhere to hide”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no point at all in comparing this to the original SWAN 15 since the stories are at different points now and totally different shit is going on! For reference, for people who get what that signals, the original SWAN 15 had Greatest Show Unearthed as its song. 
> 
> Speaking of songs: 
> 
> It's subtle this time just as it was in the original, but the 'sea song' Edgar mentions when they're on the roof at the end when he's in the hallway is 
> 
> Nine Inch Nails - "La Mer" 
> 
> which people were concerned I'd forgotten about and left back in the original SWAN 10. It's paired with
> 
> Shiny Toy Guns - Somewhere To Hide
> 
> which I ended up making a really strong association to SWAN stuff when I first heard it, and was something I played frequently when I started this project. (I accidentally credited the next chapter's story here - and titled this chapter after it! - but no one said anything, haha. So if you saw the title and song from before, you're now spoiled for part of the next one.)
> 
>  
> 
> In other news, some things we didn't get to see in the original story in general here are concrete memories of Nailbunny, and Johnny laying out being asexual while not quite having the vocab for it. His gender thing is mentioned again too. Related to both of those, I was a bit waffley about Edgar's response to both those things - and I think I've probably touched upon that in another note section somewhere - but I decided I'd rather go with him kind and patient and loving about it, rather than being confused about it and thinking it's something to laugh at like he would if he'd truly been raised by television. Those of us who are on those spectrums put up with enough shit and I really wanted to portray someone else accepting an asexual or non-binary person without forcing that person to conform to the other person's expectations since that happens to us all so much in real life. This is the most fantastical element of a story containing the anti-christ, keys to hell, and invisible teenagers, sadly.
> 
> Incredible, Lana.
> 
> Also, Vampire Edgar reference~


	16. Murder on the Dancefloor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny's issues can't be hidden anymore.

 

Sometime in late morning, much to his surprise, Edgar woke up. He didn't remember falling asleep and was amazed he'd been able to.

 

The wooden floor was cold when he slid out of bed, and his bedroom door creaked as he stepped into the hallway. Johnny's door was still closed, but there was still music playing. Hopefully he'd fallen asleep listening to it.

 

Deciding it best to pretend to be normal, Edgar took the stairs and went to find something resembling breakfast.

 

Everything felt strangely concrete, as though Edgar were especially _present_ in the world today. The texture on his cereal was _real_ and not rendered, and it had a _flavor._ For several minutes, he wondered if maybe dealing with rabbit death and kissing on rooftops had made him visible, but no one so much as glanced when he went outside and waved to morning joggers and dog walkers. Upon reflection, he was glad of it – he wasn't prepared to live in fairy tale quite that twisted.

 

Heralded by some creaking stairs and the clatter of plastic dishware, Johnny wandered into the living room sometime around noon with a large bowl of cereal. He flopped onto the couch beside Edgar with a slosh and a casual, “Mornin'.”

 

“Afternoon,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny shrugged and took a giant spoonful of cereal. Even Johnny felt more concrete now. Maybe things should have felt more magical, more dream-like, but Edgar instead found that he was just experiencing reality in an aggressive high-definition, so that even pieces of Johnny's hair poking out in strange directions were captivating and wonderful. His cereal was even more real than Edgar's bowl had been, and it had _marshmallows._

 

“You feel all right?” Edgar asked.

 

“Yeah.” Johnny swallowed the mouthful of cereal. “Sleep helped, I think.”

 

Edgar smiled, relieved that Johnny had actually slept. “Good. Me too.”

 

There was nothing but the sound of Johnny's cereal for several seconds, and then Edgar tried speaking again.

 

“So, um...”

 

Johnny swallowed another bite and then laughed as he poked through his cereal. “Yes.”

 

“Uh?”

 

“It's fine. You're fine. I'm fine. We're fine.”

 

Edgar winced a little. “Am I that predictable?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I would have asked too. But we're fine. Or, we're...” He passed his cereal bowl to his right hand and offered Edgar his left. Edgar took it, grinning. “We're whatever this is.”

 

“I can work with 'whatever.'”

 

“Good, that's about all we've got.”

 

 

 

Edgar clenched his jaw as they passed Jimmy's trailer on their way to the school half an hour later, as though the song that everyone had been waiting to hear from him would break out now and consist of nothing but, “I kissed Nny!” to some kind of penetrating techno beat. He also feared what just Jimmy's _song_ would do to him once everything was out in the open, let alone Jimmy himself.

 

There was no one in the choir room when they arrived.

 

“Must be out for lunch,” Johnny said as he opened the office in the back.

 

“They're going to be angry that we missed that too, aren't they?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Probably. Frankly, _everyone_ is angry about _everything_ I do with you now _except_ you. You're lucky I never listen to anyone.”

 

While he helped Johnny move four giant boxes of old records, Edgar considered that it _was_ literally everyone they knew that thought this was all a bad idea, except for perhaps Dib, who didn't care about individual humans so much as humanity as an abstract concept to be contrasted against aliens.

 

“Are we telling anyone today?”

 

Johnny said nothing for a while, and Edgar couldn't see him behind the boxes. Finally, quietly, he said, “What do you want to say?”

 

“I don't know. Just, hey, this is a thing now?”

 

“We should go check out some greeting cards. We can give them all a card that says one of us is pregnant. Then just hearing we're...,” he twirled his fingers in the air above his head for lack of a word, “...whatever, will be less of a shock.”

 

“They're not going to believe pregnant, we should get one for 'married' or 'dead.'”

 

Johnny's head popped up over the box he was moving, suddenly practically electric. “Oh my god, ohmygod, can we fake my death?!”

 

“I will hold you responsible for what they do to me for going along with it once they find out you're alive.”

 

“But you'll do it.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Eeeee!” The box jostled around a bit while Johnny hopped with excitement over the prospect of being fake dead.

 

With the boxes out of the way, the trunk that had been buried in the bottom of the stack was accessible and Edgar helped pull it away from the corner.

 

“What are we getting out of here?”

 

“Art supplies.”

 

“Do we need the whole trunk?”

 

Johnny narrowed his eyes. “Do _you_ think you could carry this four blocks back home?”

 

“Hey, I don't know what you're up to, I just try to get as much info as I can and then make it work.”

 

Johnny popped the locks and latches on the trunk with a loud 'thunk.' “I like you, Edgar.”

 

Edgar laughed, though he was a bit overwhelmed with the sudden expression of fondness. “I try.”

 

The trunk opened with a scraping moan. Inside sat heaps of paper, jars of paint, boxes of pencils, bundles of brushes, and tubes upon tubes of glitter.

 

Johnny went right for the glitter. “Ooo, we could put this on my death card.”

 

“I don't think 'Congratulations' is the vibe on most of those cards.”

 

“Only if you lack imagination.” Johnny popped open a tube a small cloud of glitter coated his gloved hands. It stood out particularly well against the black. “Hey, this is pretty great. If we ever end up on stage in front of real people, we should use glitter.”

 

Edgar took a tube of red glitter and tugged the cap off, though he had no intention of pouring it or wearing it. “We'll never get it off.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Why would you ever want to?”

 

“Is this Tenna talking?”

 

“Huh.” Johnny took a step back and crossed his arms. He clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “You know, I'm really not sure I should be routinely kissing someone who doesn't appreciate glitter.”

 

“I take it all back.”

 

“That's what I thought.” Johnny laughed and rubbed more silver glitter into his gloves. “We'll have to figure something out with this, it'll be great.”

 

“Did you really come here for the glitter?”

 

“Oh, right.” Johnny turned back to the trunk and pulled out some brushes and paints. “Here,” he said, shoving them against Edgar's ribs, “put those in my bag, will you?”

 

Edgar dumped the supplies – and a not-insignificant amount of glitter – into Johnny's bag with little trouble, but the next stack of supplies Johnny passed to him contained several vials of strange liquid and a few ink wells in addition to brushes, some markers, and more glitter tubes. It was awkward to keep together at best, and Edgar dropped a good portion of it in the attempt to get it all in Johnny's bag, bursting a tube of glitter and coating the floor and everything else among the paints and markers.

 

“Fuck.”

 

Johnny looked over his shoulder at the glittery heap. “Indeed.”

 

Edgar picked up the now sparkly supplies and dumped them in Johnny's bag.

 

“Well, we can't waste it!” Johnny sat on his knees in front of the glitter pile, trying to scoop it into his hands.

 

“What are you going to--”

 

But by then the glitter had been puffed into his face. When he opened his eyes, his glasses were covered in it, he could feel it in his eyelashes, and he didn't want to open his mouth. Johnny, only partly visible through sparkle-plastered lenses, grinned widely, just as covered in rainbow sparkles as Edgar.

 

“I'm contemplating making your death not fake,” Edgar told him.

 

“Awww. You couldn't.”

 

“I'm just gonna think about it _really hard_. Anything is possible if you believe in yourself. I learned that from TV.”

 

“You like me too much to commit to it. What would you do without me? Do you think _Jimmy_ would kiss you on rooftops?”

 

Edgar tried to clean the glitter from his glasses with his t-shirt, but he was just rubbing glitter with glitter. “He would with you out of the picture.”

 

Johnny's eyes widened. “Wow, that was surprisingly mafia of you.”

 

“I didn't want to have to tell you, but I'm invisible because I have the power to kiss pretty much anyone. It just comes on at random and it's dangerous for me to be in public, so I've been wiped from the Earth as a precaution. I'm sorry I didn't say so sooner.”

 

“I see.”

 

“It's a curse.”

 

“You bear it well.”

 

“My only hope is to latch onto one person and inflict them with it for the rest of my life.”

 

“And now that I've blown glitter in your face, _clearly_ ruining your life forever, this is _my_ burden, right?” He folded his arms over his chest, but leaned toward Edgar, smirking.

 

“I'm afraid so.”

 

Everything he did with Johnny was _fun._ Unless it was terrifying. Sometimes, though, he got lucky and it was both.

 

Johnny kissing him in the choir room office while covered in glitter was definitely both.

 

 

_And the idiots surround her_

_And she tells them all to go to hell_

_Because they’re in her space now_

_And they can’t even fucking know._

 

_Cry ‘blasphemy’, cry ‘fuck you’_

_But don’t bother to change'_

 

 

 _“_ Holy _shit,_ this is the gayest thing I have ever seen.”

 

Devi.

 

She stood in the doorway to the office, her hand still on the doorknob, and her song flaring just a little louder than normal in the back of Edgar's mind.

 

“Shit.” Johnny sprayed a bit of glitter when spoke which made Edgar check his own lip. “I can't fake my death now.”

 

“Excuse me?” Devi leaned forward, bracing herself on the doorknob.

 

“Nothing, nothing,” Edgar said, rushing to speak before Johnny. “It's nothing.”

 

“I assume that's what you're going to tell me all this is, too?” She pointed at them, drawing circles in the air.

 

“I...” He glanced sideways at Johnny, who unhelpfully shrugged. “...don't know?”

 

Devi sighed, shook her head, and retreated out into the choir room proper. Edgar watched her through the glass window between the main room and the office and met eyes with Tenna, who was sitting on the heater under the windows on the far wall. She raised her eyebrows and shook her head at him. He tried to grin at her, but only about a third of his face worked and it came out considerably more sheepish than he'd intended.

 

Faintly, he saw his reflections in the glass. It may have been the less than ideal conditions in the room, but they looked awfully _tired_ today. Johnny stood beside him, looking at his own faces.

 

“I've been trying not to look at them for a while,” Johnny said.

 

“They look...uh... _different?”_

 

“Worse. The word you want is _'worse_.'”

 

Edgar nodded. “Yeah.”

 

Johnny turned his face away from the glass and shoved Edgar toward the door. “Come on, let's do this while Jimmy isn't here. Devi probably won't murder you.”

 

Edgar had been with these people for so long that 'probably' was actually comforting.

 

They stepped out into the room and Devi stared them down as they each took a chair.

 

“You're both fucking dipshits,” Devi said when they sat down.

 

“Okay,” Edgar said.

 

Tenna leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. “Edgar, honey, that's not how this is supposed to go.”

 

“I told him it was stupid too,” Johnny said. “If that makes you feel any better.”

 

Edgar nodded. “He did.”

 

“Look,” Devi said, holding her hands up, “I don't care. Well, no, I care – it's fucking stupid and I don't want to look at it or be responsible for the fallout – but I don't care on a deep personal level or anything.”

 

“I do,” Tenna chimed in.

 

“Tenna does, but Tenna is fucked up in profound and mysterious ways that probably need a scientific intervention.”

 

“Aww, Dev!” Tenna gushed.

 

Devi sighed. “Anyway, again, I don't care. I tried to warn you, but you clearly have some kind of need to hurt yourself.”

 

Edgar drummed his fingers on his knee. Devi had said it, but he very nearly heard Pepito instead. “I'm not sure what I should say to that.”

 

“What you said is fine. Again, I don't care, I just – fuck.”

 

“You tried to convince me not to all that time and now you just don't care?”

 

Devi frowned. “Maybe I care about your sad TV love persona having a hard time in the abstract, then.  Nny I just can't figure the fuck out.”

 

“Yeah, I like it that way,” Johnny said.

 

“You object to even _accidental_ touch from the rest of us, but you'll attach yourself to Edgar's face while covered in glitter.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “The glitter isn't required.”

 

Edgar snickered, though he tried not to. He'd expected this to be a real confrontation, but he and Johnny had had so much go on in the last day that this was nothing and they were joking their way through it. Even the prospect of Jimmy finding out seemed mild.

 

“How long?” Devi asked.

 

“Just last night,” Edgar said.

 

“Your birthday?” Tenna jumped from the heater and took a seat with the others. “Hot stuff.”

 

Devi kicked her. “Gross, thank you.  But at least it hasn't been too long.  Maybe you'll slip out of your delusion quickly."

 

Johnny rolled his eyes.  "Gee, thanks."

 

“It's fine,” Edgar said to Devi, more out of habit now than necessity. “I don't think it should really affect you two.”

 

“Ah, good,” Devi said, leaning back in her chair. “So you _have_ thought about who it _will_ affect.”

 

“I'm not doing things based on whether or not they upset Jimmy's delicate psychological balance,” Johnny spat.

 

Devi glared at him. “But the rest of us are going to have to deal with it.”

 

“Where _is_ Jimmy?” Edgar asked.

 

“Getting us _pizza,”_ Devi said as she got up from her chair and retrieved her bag from the floor by the door. “For your lame ass birthday, believe it or not, since you hid with Nny all day yesterday.”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“Yeah. And I brought you these.” She handed him a folder in exasperated disgust.

 

Edgar opened it and found it full of photos she'd taken of him trying to capture his reflections. She'd been protective of the nice prints, and until now hadn't given him anything that wasn't on copy paper. 

 

“They're really there.” He'd seen this proof before, but it never stopped being fascinating. Each image showed his extra reflections clearly. They were still reflections, but they were visible and distinct. Seeing it outside himself like this, Edgar thought he looked haunted.

 

“I did some shit to them to make them nice,” Devi said as she dropped back into her chair, crossing her arms. “You know, color adjustment shit. But the reflections are real and not just to amuse you. There's some other shit in there, too, in case you still care about the rest of us.”

 

The last four photos in the folder weren't his reflections. The first three were group shots of everyone on some of their various field trips – in the fountain, at the pool, cramming each other into the freezers at the grocery store and posing with broken traffic signs. They'd all been rushed or in weird lighting, but Devi had done some impressive tweaking on the quality. The last one was a candid shot of Johnny, caught mid-sneering laugh, with the colors extra saturated.

 

Devi shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Thought you'd like the last one even before this bullshit.”

 

Johnny peered into the folder and laughed a bit when he saw the photo of himself. “We can frame that one,” he said, “it's clearly the best.”

 

“Thanks, Devi.”

 

She waved Edgar away and shook her head. “My suggestion is that you say nothing to Jimmy about your little miracle glitter romance until all the pizza is gone, or you'll find out how pepperoni can be weaponized.”

 

“I'm up for a pizza fight,” Johnny said, cracking his knuckles. “I could take Jimmy.”

 

Devi looked like she wanted to take a swing at him. “I was more concerned about your _boyfriend_ there, asshole.”

 

The word _'boyfriend'_ hit Edgar like he'd blindly walked into it and he was briefly concerned he'd forgotten how to breathe.

 

 _“_ I think you like him _better_ ,” Johnny whined theatrically.

 

“Maybe I _do_ because he's _not an asshole_ ,” Devi shot back.

 

They fought about who liked who more for so long that when Jimmy arrived, he could not have suspected anything out of the ordinary.

 

“Hey, here we goooo!” Jimmy yelled as he shuffled in through he back door.  He had no arms available thanks to the pizza box and a bag of stolen drinks from the convenience store down the road, so he'd triggered the latch and wedged himself through with his knee. “It might be kinda fucked up, the delivery guy dropped it when I hit him with the rock.”

 

“Ooh, what kind is it?” Tenna bounced, still sitting on the edge of the heater.

 

“Dropped On The Ground Flavor,” Jimmy said transferring it to one hand.  “I don't know, didn't ask the guy.” He presented the box to Edgar with a slight bow. “Happy Fucking Birthday, let's see what I got you.”

 

“Is this going to bite me?”

 

“If, like, a chipmunk or something got in, yeah.”

 

Johnny nudged him. “It's okay, it's from the Italian place downtown.”

 

“Yeah, the _box_ is,” Edgar muttered.

 

He risked opening the box and found an only-partly mangled pizza covered in vegetables that appeared to have been put there on purpose and not after the delivery guy crashed into someone's lawn.

 

“Wow, thank you!” Even Edgar was surprised by how genuine his own exclamation was, but right behind it, Jimmy's song began to increase in volume.

 

“ _So start up the fire_

_and turn on all the lights_

_pull yourselves together_

_and get ready for a fight”_

 

Jimmy tossed the box in Edgar's lap and the pizza nearly flopped out.  “Be sure to share with the rest of the class.”

 

Edgar took a slice with some caution and hastily passed the box around to the others, hoping they'd risk taking a bite before he had to.  The others were far less conservative about how much they took and inhaled their slices when they were barely out of the box.  It was sincerely touching that Jimmy had brought him something, but Edgar felt there had to be a catch somewhere. With everyone else happily eating, however, poisoned pizza was likely not said catch.  Edgar ate his single slice and quickly reclaimed the box for two more.

 

“Careful,” Tenna said when she passed the box. “There's glitter on a lot of it.”

 

Edgar looked between his hands and Tenna. “Do you really think I can eat a piece _without_ glitter on it?”

 

She only grinned at him.

 

Jimmy was actually fun and entertaining and only a few times did his song leak out and make him hard to understand.  Even then, it didn't seem intentional.  The longer they all sat together, the more Edgar felt guilty not saying anything about himself and Johnny and the more certain he became that they'd have to say something sooner rather than later.

 

Of course, he'd thought the same way about Johnny's mental collapses and him remembering blood, and here he was months later, still quiet.

 

Jimmy grabbed Johnny's hand in a rare show of boldness and tugged him toward the office. “Come on, come on, let's find something to put on.”

 

Johnny flinched with every tug, but agreed. “Okay, okay, let go, I'm coming.”

 

This left Edgar alone with Devi and Tenna. Edgar watched Devi sag in her chair as though she'd just been permitted to set down something heavy.

 

“Shiiiit.”

 

“Yeeeeaaah.” Tenna squeaked her skeleton toy so he matched her tone.

 

“This is the dumbest thing that's ever happened,” Devi sighed, and threw a pizza crust at the office. It bounced off the glass and spun out under some chairs.

 

“Barring some natural disasters, yeah, maybe.”

 

“Fuck you guys, too,” Edgar said. Devi didn't seem to hear him and carried on her conversation with Tenna.

 

“The fucking worst part of this is Jimmy.”

 

Tenna raised an eyebrow. “Uh, do _you_ wanna tell Jimmy? Because if so, I definitely volunteer you. I'm pretty sure we _all_ volunteer you.”

 

“He's gotta know. He's not that fucking dumb.”

 

Tenna stuck out of her lower lip and squeaked her toy again. “Aww, no, Jimmy isn't dumb, he's just damaged and selective about which versions of reality he accepts.”

 

“That... that sounds just like Nny.”

 

Tenna shrugged. “Probably why the reality Jimmy accepts is the one where they're together, then.”

 

Devi looked at Edgar and then back to Tenna. “I'm concerned about the things you say sometimes, Ten.  It's like you're being fed your lines from some man behind a curtain.”

 

“That would explain me being only partly invisible. You'll probably have to kill me for the good of the mission in the climax of the movie.”

 

Devi nodded. “Very likely.”

 

A sudden burst of enthusiastic music erupted from the office with Johnny's protest on its heels.

 

“Nooooo!”

 

“What? It's fun!”

 

“No, come on, you're being a dick!”

 

They screamed over the opening verse and Tenna began giggle-snorting loudly next to Edgar, so the first words he could really hear were the start of the chorus.

 

“ _He came with the frame_

_they all look the same._

_Quite attractive,_

_not distracting, with a hint that he's gay”_

 

Edgar blinked, both a little offended and kind of afraid. “What the fuck?”

 

“Jimmy, stop it!” Johnny still protested from the back.

 

“Fine, fine, sorry, I was kidding! Let go!”

 

The song stopped abruptly and Edgar and the others sat and looked at each other while Jimmy and Johnny argued about who should select the 'real' song.  Johnny yelled something about getting a stapler and there was some alarming shuffling that brought both Devi and Edgar to their feet. 

 

“Guys?” Devi called out. “We cool in there?”

 

“We're good,” Johnny answered.

 

“Fine!” Jimmy added, several seconds later.

 

A few more seconds later, a less aggressively happy song floated into the choir room and Jimmy and Johnny followed after it.

 

“I can't make any promises about what comes on after this,” Johnny said as he walked out, hands in the air. He took his seat back beside Edgar as the lyrics began.

 

_“It's murder on the dancefloor_  
_But you better not kill the groove_  
_DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down”_

 

“Oh, come on,” Jimmy whined. “I said I was sorry. You're not even going to sing?”

 

Tenna sprang off the heater. “I'll sing!”

 

“I'll sing with _Tenna_ ,” Johnny said.

 

Tenna clapped like a seal and immediately sang the next few lines in Johnny's face.

 

 _“Oh, I know, I know, I know_  
_About your kind_  
_And so, and so, and so_  
_I'll have to play”_

 

Johnny, always unable to resist theatrics, grinned widely and picked up the next part as he rose from his chair.

 

 _“If you think you're getting away_  
_I will prove you wrong_  
_I'll take you all the way”_

 

Here, Tenna joined him and they both beamed at Edgar.

  
_“Boy, just come along_  
_Hear me when I say, hey”_

 

Edgar had long ago given up protesting that he could not sing and joined in, though he'd been a little more interested in just watching Johnny shift modes than participating. Mercifully, they did not leave Edgar to sing alone and instead happily twirled around yelling with him.

 

_“It's murder on the dancefloor_  
_But you better not kill the groove, hey hey_  
_It's murder on the dancefloor_  
_But you better not steal the moves_  
_DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down”_

 

Tenna and Johnny both knew some kind of secret handshake that they used both to keep time and to invite Jimmy and Devi in.

 

“ _Oh I know, I know, I know  
There may be others”_

 

Jimmy knew the handshake and executed it perfectly with Tenna, but Devi obviously did not or was unwilling to play along.  She still responded to Johnny's cue and let herself be pulled up into their ridiculous dance.

 

“ _And so, and so, and so  
You'll just have to pray”_

 

Johnny drew the others close to him so easily, and despite being repulsed by the hand grabbing earlier, tugged Jimmy in by hooking his fingers around the chain on Jimmy's neck. When Johnny did the same to Edgar thanks to his necklace from Dib, he expected to fall on his face, but fell into sync so easily it was like the move had been his idea.

 

 _“If you think, you're getting away_  
_I will prove you wrong_  
_I'll take you all the way_  
_Stay another song_  
_I'll blow you all away, hey”_

 

Devi grabbed his hand when Johnny shoved Edgar and Jimmy away on the last line and tug-twirled him into some kind of dramatic pose. She was laughing almost more than she was singing and Edgar suspected he was right there with her.

 

“ _It's murder on the dancefloor  
But you better not kill the groove, hey hey”_

 

They danced with each other, with Tenna's squeaktoy, and with the empty pizza box until everyone was dizzy and nearly sick.  And only then, on the tail end of the song, when Johnny, out of breath and grinning, dropped the performance and bumped shoulders with Edgar, did Jimmy's song flare up again.

 

“ _DJ, gonna burn this goddamn house right down”_

**“ _...because I've never been hot enough_**

**_and I aim to start.”_ **

 

Edgar felt no hostility in it, but it still made him wonder.

 

 

 

 

 

When Edgar and Johnny returned home that night, Jimmy still knew nothing. Unfortunately, an hour after that, Johnny knew too much.

 

First, Johnny only complained that the song had given him a headache, and he was going to look for something to take.  After several minutes, Edgar called up to ask if he'd found anything.  There was no response.  When Johnny failed to respond to his name more than once, Edgar went up after him and found him staring into the bathtub.

 

“Nny? Are you okay? I called, but you didn't answer.”

 

Johnny turned to look at him, and Edgar caught Johnny's reflections out of the corner of his eye. The one in the back was covered in a thick splatter of blood.

 

“My bathtub was filled with body parts.”

 

“...Oh.” Edgar’s mouth dried up.

 

Johnny looked into the mirror. “I know what it feels like to saw through bone.” He blinked at the reflections as though he were listening to them respond and then glared angrily at them. “It's a pain in the ass.”

 

Edgar took a step forward and looked into the mirror. He hadn't been imagining it earlier. His faces were _tired_ , they were nearly empty of color, and still something on their faces blurred and swirled away from him if he tried to look too directly at them. Johnny's reflections glanced at him and then all of them, even the ones that weren't _his_ Johnny, the ones bloody, empty, and gaunt, grinned at him.

 

“Are you okay?” Edgar whispered.

 

“You really have to stop asking me that.” He still stared right into the glass. If he hadn't answered, Edgar would have wondered if Johnny even knew he was there.

 

“I can't help it, I don't know what to do, this is – ” He looked around the mundane bathroom, looked at Johnny, and then back to the reflections, helpless. “This is fucked up. This is scary. This is fucking scaring me.”

 

“I really don't think it's great either,” Johnny said distantly. “I just kept thinking murder on a dance floor sounded really familiar...”

 

Edgar swallowed and watched his others in the mirror do the same. “What can I do?”

 

“It's...”

 

Johnny reached out to the glass, staring in haunted wonder at the faces inside. Then he glanced at the bathtub and the spell the faces had him on broke. He jumped backwards, arms flailing, nearly toppling Edgar.

 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

 

Edgar wrapped his arms around Johnny's torso and held him tight from behind. “It's okay, it's okay, it's not you!”

 

“I remember them, I remember putting parts of people in there, I remember having to buy new tools! No one questioned it! I didn't question it! I got away with all of it, I just --”

 

He shook against Edgar's grip, but had roughly the coordination of gelatin, so if he was trying to pull away, he was doing a terrible job.

 

“You might _remember,_ but it wasn't you. It's like a dream, Nny, none of it is really you even if you remember being there.”

 

Johnny put a hand over his mouth.  “The restaurant with the spork, oh my god, the spork.”

 

“Nny, can I –?”

 

“Drown it out,” Johnny said, suddenly breathing heavily. “Just do something to make it go away.”

 

Of course Johnny wasn't wearing his headphones.

 

“Shit, shit, okay, I – ” Edgar was not a singer, but without the headphones, he did all he could think to do and sang the first thing that came to mind. “ _Oh, fuck it, I'm gonna have a party!”_

 

Johnny squeezed his eyes closed and tried to sing with him, but it was strained and punctuated with what would have been screams if he hadn't been clenching his teeth.

 

“None of the blood was mine,” Johnny choked out.

 

“ _I saw life turn into a TV show.”_

 

Johnny nodded and did the next line, even with his strangled voice, “ _It was totally weird.”_

 

Johnny's legs buckled and Edgar nearly dropped him on the linoleum. With his arms now wrapped awkwardly under Johnny's armpits, Edgar pulled him out of the bathroom and hauled him around the corner. Edgar's room wasn't somewhere they spent much time, but it was the closest soft surface. He tried to hoist Johnny on the bed but with him flailing and clawing at himself, Edgar found the best method was just to flop onto the bed with him.

 

Johnny curled into himself immediately. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

 

“Stay here, I'll be right back!”

 

Edgar scrambled to his feet and around the hallway into Johnny's room, nearly falling over himself to bring the headphones back to Johnny. When he stumbled back into his room, he clumsily fixed the headphones on Johnny's head. Johnny seemed only distantly aware they were there.

 

  
_“Have you ever been alone?_  
_Fighting your own war?_  
_Someone stole the life from you_  
_And now they're back for more_  
_Your heart is on the floor_  
_Beating out of control_  
_Oh I don't want this anymore“_

 

 

The song played loud enough in the headphones that Edgar could hear the words. Johnny let out a long heavy breath and panted a little as he adjusted the headphones on his ears. He looked at Edgar and said nothing while the song blasted into his ears.

 

 

“ _So I'll be sailing on_  
_Out into Bermuda blue”_

Johnny nodded along with the song and his breathing began to steady. He stared at Edgar, wide-eyed, afraid.

 

“What else can I do?” Edgar asked.

 

“Don't tell them,” Johnny said.

 

 _“Compass needle breaks_  
_Like the heart I gave to you”_

“Nny, why not? Don't you think they can--”

 

“Don't tell them!” Johnny shrieked, angrily gripping Edgar's comforter.

 

“Okay, okay, I won't!”

 

“ _I've been laying down in the devil's lair  
Sailing into the sun, I'll be baptized there”_

 

Johnny relaxed and let out another long slow breath.  Pressing the headphones hard against his ears, Johnny sunk back down against Edgar's bed and squeezed his eyes shut. His whole body clenched into a fetal position.

 

“Nny, I'm not sure this is a good...idea.”

 

 

_“So I'll be sailing on_  
_I'm gone_  
_I'm gone_

  
_I'll be sailing on_  
_I'm going into the sun”_

 

 

Johnny went limp, and after checking to see he was still breathing, Edgar went into the bathroom to get him a glass of water for when he woke. His reflections stared out at him from above the sink, all exhausted and all straining to convey anything else.

 

He returned to the bedroom, placed the water on the nightstand and sat down next to Johnny on the bed. They were both still covered in glitter.

 

 

 

 

Edgar made up several excuses for why he and Johnny were missing phone calls the next two days. No charger for Johnny's stolen cell phone. Spending a lot of time in the basement, shower, backyard, or garage. Devi was convinced of nothing however, and showed up on Edgar's porch the morning of the third day. In the street behind her, Tenna glared meaningfully from the window of the van.

 

“Hi,” Devi said, “we're here to pick your asses up.”

 

“Devi, we can't, he's not feeling well, and --”

 

“From all that playing in the garage he's been doing?”

 

Edgar bit his lip. _This would be a lot easier if people just knew._ “He's just a little out of it, you know how he gets.”

 

“ _Come on_. Or do you want Jimmy getting even more suspicious?”

 

If he was honest, Edgar no longer cared what Jimmy knew. It seemed somewhat trivial compared to a remembered bathtub of body parts.

 

Keys clattered as Johnny sat down on the stairs behind him. “Hey, Devi.”

 

“Hi, Asshole. Ready to join the land of the living today?”

 

Edgar flinched at her choice of words and he saw Johnny's eye twitch. “If you insist,” Johnny said.

 

“Good, get your shit and come on. Tenna's driving.” She turned and headed into the van.

 

“Motivation if I ever heard any,” Johnny muttered, dragging himself to his feet.

 

“I tried,” Edgar said.

 

“It's fine.” Johnny waved him away weakly. “Not much stops Devi when she has an idea. Let's just go.”

 

 

 

 

Jimmy immediately suctioned himself to Johnny's side when they arrived in the choir room. Not touching Johnny, of course, but just being aggressively _present._ Edgar was too tired to care, and apparently so was Johnny. He smiled weakly at Jimmy, who beamed back in response. If Jimmy noticed that Johnny was phoning in his existence today, he gave no indication of it.

 

Watching Johnny try to be normal was painful, so Edgar focused on just being distracting and agreeably interacting with everything put in front of him. Every ridiculous idea Tenna had, Edgar jumped at the chance to be involved in. Devi gave him a Look every so often, but it wasn't enough to dissuade him. He could help Johnny by taking attention away from him, so that's what he was going to do. Johnny looked sad and scared any time Edgar caught his eye, but Edgar had no way to help him without making a big deal of things. The best he could do was hope for things to be okay and quick.

 

“Hey, we should get something to eat,” Jimmy suggested after they'd dissected Tenna's plans for a hang glider for an hour. He turned enthusiastically to Johnny. “Nny?”

 

Johnny looked a bit surprised to be spoken to. “Whatever you want.”

 

“I meant come with me.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “I really don't feel good.”

 

Devi crossed her arms, but said nothing as Jimmy launched into hyperactive concern mode. “Shit, okay, I'll steal you some orange juice, okay? Vitamin C and shit. Unless you're gonna puke.”

 

Johnny almost laughed. “I don't think so.”

 

“... You don't want orange juice, or you aren't gonna puke?”

 

“I'm not gonna puke.”

 

Jimmy launched into a battle-plan that was more for him than Johnny. “Okay, orange juice, and maybe like some soup? I don't think they make soup much, but I'll check and then maybe mashed potatoes? They usually have those and they're not really made of anything, so they shouldn't hurt, right? Maybe we'll just get everything.”

 

“Everything is good,” Tenna agreed. “Why choose when you can just haunt all of it?”

 

“You coming with me?”

 

“Yeah, I'll grab us some ice cream.” Tenna poked Devi's arm. “Hey. Mistress of Disapproval. You should come with us. We're gonna need the extra arms.”

 

Devi raised her eyebrows at Edgar. “Sure, Ten.”

 

Edgar bit his lip. _Leaving Johnny by himself for fifteen minutes is probably fine, right?_ “Hey, I'm coming too.”

 

“Actually,” Johnny said suddenly, “I need you to help me get something from the office.”

 

“Oh. Sure, okay.” He looked guiltily over his shoulder as the others pushed through the choir room's double doors without him. Devi stopped at the door to give him one last stare down, but left without a word. When the doors shuffled back together, Edgar turned to Johnny, who had his shoulders hunched and a hand over his chest.

 

“Whoa, whoa, are you okay? Are you _actually_ sick?”

 

“You would be too if you could see what I do.”

 

“I'm so sorry.” Edgar sat down next to him. “What do you need?”

 

“New brains,” Johnny groaned. “These ones are _fucking broken_.”

 

“Well, you're still being a smart ass, so all is not lost yet. I meant, 'What can I _do_?'”

 

“Try to keep them out if this gets bad.” Johnny wound his fingers around his necklace. “Distract them until I can get control of it.”

 

“Nny, I – how long do you think you can hide all this?”

 

Johnny glared at him. “As long as I want.”

 

“It's not helping you, though.” _It's not helping me, either._

 

“Because all of them knowing I'm just like some pathetic rag doll container for murder memories is really going to help me. Just fucking imagine what they'll do.”

 

Edgar shook his head. “Steal things from the nurse's office for you, I would think. They _care_ about you.”

 

Johnny's breathing stuttered and strained. “They probably shouldn't.”

 

“You're not that --”

 

And then Johnny winced and nearly slid from his chair. Edgar grabbed him to keep him from hitting the floor and hauled him up into his lap.

 

“Nny.”

 

Nothing.

 

“Johnny.”

 

Nothing.

 

_“Shit.”_

 

With Johnny unconscious and the rest of his friends just down the hall getting trays of stolen cafeteria food, Edgar sat with his legs pinned to his chair by Johnny’s limp body, thinking that there could potentially _still_ be a good side to all this.

 

He might have considerably less to lie about very soon.

 

 

 

 

Despite Johnny's wishes for the situation, the others returned with their trays of food to find Johnny unconscious and partly draped over Edgar's lap.

 

“Wow, you don't mess around now, do you?” Tenna observed. Her tone said she meant it to be a joke, but no one else was laughing.

 

Devi handed her tray to Jimmy, who put both trays down on the piano.

 

“What the _fuck_ happened?” Devi practically spat. Accusing, frustrated. _Scared._

 

“It's okay,” Edgar said slowly. “Now that you're here, you can help.”

 

Tenna abruptly realized that it wasn't a funny act, and gasped. She fumbled with her trays of ice cream and nearly toppled a bowl of soup to the floor. “Oh my god, is he okay?”

 

Edgar nodded. “I think. This happens...” _All the time. Every day. More and more._ He could finally just stop lying, stop downplaying, all at once. “This happens a lot.”

 

Jimmy dropped to his knees next to the chairs Edgar and Johnny were draped on. “What do we do? What's the fuck's wrong with him?”

 

“He'll be happier if he wakes up on his own than if we force it.” He kept one hand on Johnny's shoulder and with the other, pointed to each of the others as he listed what Johnny would need. “I need a glass of water, a blanket, and the beanbag from the other room.”

 

Devi immediately tore out of the room for the water, and Tenna hesitated at first, but then ran as though she'd been charged by lightning to retrieve the beanbag. Jimmy, however, stayed frozen to the floor.

 

“What's wrong with him?”

 

“He's having trouble with the things he's remembering. I told you, it happens all the time, and he'll be fine.”

 

Jimmy shook his head. _“I've_ never seen this.”

 

“He's been asking me to help him hide it for months. Usually, it's when we're at home, or he makes something up to leave if he can feel it coming.” Such simple things to say, but they were so _liberating._

 

“Do you need to move?” Jimmy asked brightly. “I could hold him here while you stretch?”

 

“No, he gets really upset when he ends up somewhere other than where he fell asleep. If it's you instead of me, he'll probably hurt you.”

 

Edgar expected an argument, some sassy comment, some nasty jab. Instead, Jimmy's eyes went wide and he shuffled away. He pulled himself to his feet using the piano just as Tenna and Devi returned with their items.

 

“Here, Ten.” Edgar waved behind himself. “Sorry, that's actually for me since this might be a while.”

 

“Loser,” she said, trying to laugh or inspire it in someone else. No one laughed, but she tucked the beanbag behind Edgar and then looked at Jimmy clutching the piano. She bit her lip and took a step backward. “I'll... I'll go get the blanket too.”

 

“Where do you need the water?”

 

“He'll ask for it when he wakes up,” Edgar said. “Just have it handy.”

 

“Does this a lot, you say?” Devi asked, placing the water on the piano. She stared at Edgar, ready with either rage or skepticism. Maybe both.

 

Edgar sighed and watched Johnny's breathing. Steady. Good. “Daily,” he said.

 

“And you were planning to share this when?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “I don't know if he was ever planning on it. He's going to be upset when he wakes up and you all know.”

 

“And you just played into it?” Devi snarled. “You just let him decide to keep something like random passing out a secret?”

 

“He wanted to,” Edgar said. “I thought it was his thing to tell.”

 

Tenna returned to the room with the blanket. “You or him?”

 

Edgar nodded toward Johnny. “Him. Makes him less pointy when he wakes up.”

 

“He has you trained even when he's unconscious,” Devi said. “You'll do everything just the way he wants it, won't you?”

 

“So would _you_ ,” Edgar shot back.

 

“Oh, no. You haven’t been here long enough if you think that. I like Nny, but I'm not doing what _you're_ doing. I'm not making excuses for his bullshit. We fucking tried to tell you, but no, you had your _magical connection_ with him, you knew him _so much better_ and now you're his fucking _caretaker._ ”

 

“You guys wouldn't tell me exactly why!”

 

“Do _not_ make this my fault, Edgar,” Devi threatened. “I am not the one lying to everyone for him.”

 

“What would _you_ have done with him?”

 

“The same,” Jimmy said. He'd been silent until that point, just hovering shakily by the piano.

 

Devi put her hands on her hips. “Jimmy, I swear to god --”

 

“It's not just Edgar,” Jimmy defended. “I would have done the same thing.”

 

“You know what this is? This is you trying _so hard_ to be whatever Nny wants since _being_ him didn't work and neither did locking him in your trailer with you. Do you have a box of keys and headphones and shit somewhere so you can dress up like him and pretend to be in love with yourself when no one else is around?”

 

Tenna put her hand on Devi's arm. “Dev, holy shit, calm down.”

 

“Don't fucking tell me how to feel, Ten. This shit was old six months ago, and it's getting worse goddamn daily.”

 

Jimmy said nothing, but his lip quivered.

 

“How long does this usually last?” Tenna asked, putting herself between Edgar and Devi.

 

Edgar inclined his head, grateful. “Sometimes an hour? It'll depend on what he remembered.”

 

“It better be fucking _karate_ ,” Devi said, “because I'm kicking him across the room as soon as he's conscious.”

 

“No, you aren't,” Edgar told her.

 

“Fucking watch me. I don't care if I have to kick through you first, you both deserve it.”

 

Tenna sighed. “Guys. The last time you people got physical, Jimmy almost lost some major facial features. Can't we settle our issues with ping-pong or something?”

 

“Fuck you,” Devi spat.

 

“Look, does the fact that they lied about it make Nny any more or less unconscious right now? This is a thing now, let's just try to go with it.”

 

“I am not letting the lying go.”

 

“I'm not telling you to. Let's just get info for now? If it's gonna be an hour, Edgar can fill us in.”

 

Devi tossed her hands up in frustration. “Fucking _fine_. Talk about your feelings, I'll be over here waiting to kill you all.” She sat angrily on the piano bench and grabbed a tray of food.

 

Edgar looked at Johnny, still completely passed out in his lap. “He's been having trouble almost since we met,” he said. “It was little at first, and I didn't realize how much I was lying about until it started getting bad. And then I didn't know how to stop.”

 

He explained Johnny remembering rabbits and baking mascots and bloody frozen drink trips and the van and strange words and commercials and it was only when he reached the last part that he hesitated about unloading _all_ of his lies by omission. Johnny had been so desperate that they not know about the murder.

 

“What happened the other day when you guys just vanished on us?” Tenna asked as she took a bite from a partly melted ice cream sandwich.

 

“You know that time he jumped on Jimmy?”

 

There was a pause.

 

“The most recent one,” Edgar clarified.

 

Tenna nodded intently, her mouth full of ice cream. Even Devi and Jimmy listened with great interest while they avoided looking at each other.

 

“He remembered attacking Jimmy in some other lifetime when that happened and scared the shit out of himself. It's been stuff like that since then, but the other day, he finally just remembered killing people.”

 

Jimmy coughed on his mashed potatoes. _“'Finally?'”_

 

“He told me he knew it was coming, he just needed a memory to confirm.”

 

Tenna looked around the room at the others. “Bullshit?” she offered optimistically.

 

Edgar let himself smile bitterly. “Do you have a mirror?”

 

“We can get one,” Devi said. She unwrapped an ice cream sandwich and started to stand.

 

“Maybe wait until you're done eating,” Edgar suggested, but Tenna had jumped up ahead of Devi and was already on her feet.

 

She charged through the choir room doors without hesitation and was gone for a minute or two.

 

Edgar glanced between the swinging door and Devi.

 

“I don't know what she's doing,” Devi said.

 

“Uh oh.”

 

Tenna returned with a jagged piece of mirror as big as her face. Her hand was bleeding and dripped on the choir room floor.

 

Edgar would have jumped to his feet if not for Johnny. “Holy shit, Ten, are you okay?”

 

“It's no big deal, I'll fix it in a sec. You guys bleed in here all the time, right?”

 

_"But that's okay, I'm with the band, baby"_

 

“Is that from the bathroom?”

 

“It's cool, no worries. What do you need this for?”

 

Devi ran her hand over the side of her face. “Ten, I meant the one in the office.”

 

Tenna looked at the glass in her bloody hand. “Jesus, you coulda told me.” She turned to Edgar and offered him the glass.

 

“No, no, it's not for me. Just... just _look_ at him.”

 

Edgar watched Tenna position the mirror and strain to line herself up with it to get a good look. Then she gasped and nearly dropped the slightly bloody glass on Johnny's face.

 

“Ohmygod.”

 

Her hands trembled a bit as she held the jagged mirror and she stared at Edgar. Devi came up behind her and took the mirror in one hand, ice cream still in the other.

 

“Dev, don't,” Tenna warned.

 

Devi ignored her and did a similar visual dance to get the correct angle.

 

“Jesus,” Devi muttered when she finally saw Johnny's increasingly bloody faces.

 

When Jimmy looked into the mirror, he said nothing at all. Edgar only knew he'd seen when his eyes widened.

 

They set the mirror on the piano, Devi emptied the contents of the first aid kit from the wall next to it, and the three of them crammed themselves close together on the piano bench. They made a small fuss over what kind of bandages to put on Tenna, but after that, no one seemed to know how to respond except with more ice cream.

 

“Does anyone mind if I just turn on the stereo?” Jimmy asked into his ice cream sandwich.

 

No one answered him. He took it to mean no objections and a minute later, he walked out of the back room with the intro to a song behind him.

 

“Did you pick this?” Tenna asked.

 

Jimmy shrugged.

 

 

“ _Eckstein, Eckstein_ __  
_Alles muss versteckt sein_ _  
__Alles muss versteckt sein”_

 

If he were on TV, Edgar supposed the soundtrack would be an odd match to the events in the room, but the longer he listened, the more he felt himself knowing the song, the more he suspected Jimmy _had_ selected the song rather than it having come up at random. It was everything Jimmy really liked – a strong beat, people yelling, someone with a guitar, something creepy, and in German.

 

“ _Wieder lieg’ ich auf der Lauer_

_Denn wir spielen unser Spiel_

_Wieder wart’ ich an der Mauer_

_Wierder steh’ ich kurz vorm Ziel”_

 

Jimmy stared at Edgar and Johnny while the song played. He didn’t say anything, and his face was remarkably blank.

 

_But he knows now, right? He has to._

 

Tenna slowly slid her arms across the top of the piano. “Soooo, what are we doing now?”

 

“Waiting for him to wake up so I can kick his ass,” Devi said. She licked from chocolate from her thumb.

 

“No, I mean, after that. Are we gonna do something?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“I don’t know, he just… killed people, apparently. We’re just gonna keep going?”

 

“ _1,2,3,4…”_

 

Devi rolled her eyes. “Edgar seems to be.”

 

“I’m not delighted about it either,” Edgar defended. “But it’s not like it’s _him_ doing it.”

 

“Ugh.” Devi propped her chin up on one hand. “This is all such bullshit.”

 

“Oh, good,” Tenna said with a heavy layer of sarcasm. “I was worried this was real life and I’d have to deal with consequences and shit.”

“ _-5,6,7,8,9,10!_

_Augen auf – ich komme!”_

 

 

Johnny remained asleep, despite the best efforts of Jimmy’s thumping German bass.

 

“We don’t have real life, Ten. We’re a bunch of losers who are stuck with each other because there’s no one else on the planet who can see us here. Even after I kick his ass we’ll go get ice cream or tacos or some shit, you know that’s how it works.”

 

“That’s how it works when it’s _Jimmy_ ,” Tenna said. “Are we all going to just do the same thing?”

 

Jimmy still said nothing.

 

“Maybe we could wait until he wakes up before we condemn him?” Edgar suggested.

 

“ _Zeig’ dich nicht!”_

 

Tenna looked at Edgar in disbelief. “You’re so _chill_ with murder, dude, this is _weird._ You were _not_ the one I pegged for this.”

 

“I’m not saying it’s great or anything, but it also wasn’t _him._ You can’t shun him for remembering something. Be angry for the lying, that’s fine, but this isn’t his fault.”

 

Devi sighed. “It’s good that you’re concerned, Ten. If we were all normal, I’d be doing the same thing. But we’re all stuck with each other, you know that. He and I hash it out, someone bleeds, we're done.”

 

“Yeah, I just… feel like we should give him some kind of quiz later.”

 

“Yeah? ’How much do you feel like murder today, on a scale of one to ten’?”

 

Tenna’s shoulders sagged. “You’d lie, huh? If you had to take a murder test?”

 

Devi closed her eyes. “Yes.”

 

Tenna clicked her tongue and drummed her fingers on the piano. “Okay, so we just let Devi smear him on the sidewalk for lying and then we pretend it’s nothing. Got it.”

 

Jimmy muttered along with the song as though Tenna and Devi were not there.

 

 

“ _Augen auf ich-_

 

_Komme!”_

 

 

Johnny startled awake abruptly with a large gasp and digging an elbow into Edgar's thigh. Edgar hardly had time to catch his breath before Johnny was sitting up, forehead pressed into his hands, blanket draped over his shoulders.

 

“Nny?”

 

Johnny's shoulders twitched and he blinked at Edgar. “You... you have too much...” He picked up one hand and fluttered it in front of Edgar's eyes. “Face.”

 

“Too much _face_?”

 

“No, no, too many lines, too many – goddammit!” He brought his knees up and smushed his face into them.

 

Having too much face or too many lines wasn't Edgar's primary concern at the moment, no matter what it meant. He motioned for the glass of water and Devi passed it to him.

 

“Nny. Here. Hey, listen, I'm sorry, but you should probably know that everyone is here.”

 

Devi, Tenna, and Jimmy stood tensely nearby, watching as Edgar held the water in front of Johnny. Johnny picked up his head, made eye contact with everyone, and then moaned miserably back into his knees. “Nooooo.”

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar said. “I didn't really have a choice.”

 

“But they're alive.”

 

Edgar exchanged nervous glances with the others.

 

“Should we _not_ be?” Tenna asked.

 

Johnny's shoulder's shook, but whether it was sobbing or laughing, Edgar couldn't tell.

 

“Jimmy doesn’t remember what it looks like, but I do.” Johnny closed his eyes and continued, almost singing. “No steel, no hooks, no bone. He doesn’t see them, but I do.”

 

Jimmy shrank into himself against the piano and Tenna rubbed his arm reassuringly.

 

Johnny reached out for the glass of water and then downed all of it in one go. “I know what his ribs look like,” he said.

 

Devi and Tenna looked sideways at Jimmy, who had always been gangly.

 

“I mean from the inside,” Johnny said, nearly giggling into his hands. Edgar honestly preferred him screaming and scared and that worried him.

 

Tenna put a hand over her mouth.

 

“You didn’t just _attack_ me?” Jimmy asked timidly.

 

Johnny cackled bitterly, and his voice sounded like he was about to cry. The combination of present Johnny’s terror and past Johnny’s apparent glee left him few options but tearful laughter. “No,” he shouted through the laugh, “I tore open your whole front!”

 

Jimmy curled his hands against his chest and he looked desperately at the others for some kind of input. Edgar was the only one who had dealt with any of this. He carried some kind of weird responsibility.

 

“We’re going to be okay. We just have to ride this out.”

 

It seemed the best thing to say. Johnny had never reacted quite this way to remembering and Edgar had no template to work from but ‘wait.’

 

“Just pretend I’m not here,” Johnny said, putting his face in his hands. “Just give me a sec.”

 

Tenna clicked her tongue. “Mmmmkaaay…”

 

Devi shook her head and pulled a chair out. “Let’s just sit,” she said.

 

Tenna had to pull a frozen Jimmy to a chair by his elbow, and even then it took some time for him to stop having bouts of panicked breathing but, little by little, they were able to relax. Devi had apparently decided not to smear Johnny across the walls for now, and so they just waited.

 

Waited for Johnny to come out of his head and join them, waited for Jimmy to stop muttering lyrics and squeezing his arms, waited for Tenna to stop biting her lip. They tried to do as Johnny asked, tried to pretend he wasn't there. The longer they pretended, the easier it was, and the more Edgar thought they might all be okay, even if Devi wanted violence later. It had to be okay. It was just as Devi said, and just as Johnny himself had said a year ago – they were the only people in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First up, there seems to be a weird formatting issue toward the end of this one that I can't figure out to fix, so if you're getting a section that's weirdly indented, there's no reason for that, I just apparently failed in converting this somehow.
> 
>  
> 
> So, obviously, this is nothing like the original SWAN 16 -which was mostly a mess about songs- but it does contain the start to some events (that happen properly in the next chapter!) that are comparable to some stuff in the original SWAN 11, so maybe I just took like a five chapter detour or something. Of course, with Edgar and Johnny's relationship happening earlier and differently, we're getting stuff here that we probably first saw in SWAN17 or 18, so we're all over the place. 
> 
> Lots of songs this time, which I suspect will be the norm from here on out. I really wanted to show that their lives are just marinating in music. Johnny carries music around with him, but even the others rely on it. Their inner songs flare when certain emotions hit them, and Jimmy often uses music to ground himself when he's freaking out. They all keep things to play music in every place they regularly inhabit. 
> 
> I'm fond of getting in more little call outs to this group just being creepy people, too. Jimmy just mentions that he hit the delivery guy with a rock. There is no follow up, it is considered normal. 
> 
> Tenna breaks the mirror in the bathroom, which calls for slightly more alarm, but is still more like a 'lol, Tenna' moment to everyone than a thing to be concerned about. I'm also happy with her bleeding like the rest of the crew. I think each of these kids has internalized a different level of weird scary shit, so Tenna often comes off as the frivolous fun one with the occasional streak of real talk practicality, but it's good to see she's integrated some weird spooky crap too. 
> 
> For those of you familiar with the original SWAN, Johnny is going to start looking a bit more familiar. I miss him being fun and full of life already! But the glitter and the dance thing with the others is like the last time he'll feel right enough to be as bouncy as he has been. This starts something of a decline for him. But, part of the reason I wanted to give him so much more life was that it would make this part that much worse. (The rest had to do with removing my fear-based decisions from the first time around, which actually brought Johnny closer to his canon material self, so that's interesting.) 
> 
> I got to do a lot here that I'm happy with, but I think I will miss things being overall lighter! It's all going to get a bit thick and dark for everyone after this point. I'll have to make sure I give them all a chance to come up for air every so often.
> 
>  
> 
> Songs! They are, in order:
> 
> (Devi's Song, 'Work In Progress")  
> (Jimmy's Song, "Never Been Hot Enough")  
> "He Came With The Frame (Spacekats Remix) - Spray  
> "Murder On The Dancefloor" - Sophie Ellis-Bextor  
> "Baptized by Fire" - Spinnerette  
> (Tenna's Song, "Technicolor Shoes")  
> "Augen Auf" - Oomph! 
> 
> "Augen Auf" was used in the original SWAN 12, and is used in a similar way here. The others are all showing up here for the first time, though "He Came With The Frame" was given to me in the Cherry Doom Yahoo Group back when I was first starting the original SWAN, so it's always had strong associations with this story and I really wanted to include a tiny nod of it in this version of the story someday.


	17. fuck fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Murder, memories, mirrors, home invasions and sleepovers.

Johnny heard their voices, but very little of what they said. It could easily have been their songs interfering. Once, he would have told himself that and happily believed it. Now, he knew better.

 

“I wouldn’t trust my life to anything Tenna put together.”

 

“ _If I fall, moondust will cover me, moondust will cover me...”_

 

“What would we even need a hang glider _for?”_

 

“Um, it's like flying. And it’s a new perspective!”

 

They sounded like fun people. Johnny was fairly sure he remembered that they were.

 

“ _Spaceboy, you're sleepy now_  
_Your silhouette is so stationary”_

 

“Yeah, everything's better when you look _down_ on it.”

 

“Wow, Mom, that's the most pretentious thing you've ever said.”

 

“I was trying to be sarcastic, thanks.”

 

 _“You're released, but your custody calls_  
_And I wanna be free”_

 

Laughter. It was hard to decide if it was pleasant. “Maybe _you_ were, but Devi would straight up say that.”

 

Devi _would_. Johnny didn't just think it, he knew it, he'd heard her say it before, he'd heard her mean it. She was different back then. It was years ago. She was older back then.

 

“ _Don't you wanna be free?”_

 

He flinched, but tried not to fight it. It hurt to fight and usually rendered him unconscious. Maybe he could just watch it all like a movie and it just wash over him.

 

“ _Do you like girls or boys?_  
_It's confusing these days”_

Older Devi Before Devi was beautiful. All three of him thought so. She had talked to him about movies, books, music, art. She had been with him and his car.

 

“ _But moondust will cover you_  
_Cover you_  
_So bye-bye love”_

He'd been happy, even. Edgar didn't need to do anything after all, problem solved.

 

“ _Yeah, bye-bye love”_

 

The song he was hearing wasn't his.

_  
“Hallo Spaceboy”_

 

“What about?” Tenna was staring at him, and soon the others joined her. Suddenly, they were in the same room with him.

 

“What?”

 

“You just said you were happy,” Devi said. “About what?”

 

“ _This chaos is killing me”_

 

“You.” He hadn't had the time or energy to lie or think that reply through. Or maybe he had but just didn't take it.

 

“ _(Spaceboy, spaceboy, spaceboy, hallo~_  
_~Moondust will cover me)”_

 

The others had expected another answer too, and he watched all their faces change.

 

“Me?” Devi asked, pointing to her chest.

 

 _“Ground to Major, bye bye Tom_  
_(This chaos is killing me)”_

 

Edgar tried to give Johnny a look that he was sure he'd know how to respond to if this were the right lifetime. No, this _was_ the right lifetime, but Devi wasn't and she'd made him happy so she had to be kept right where –

 

“You should leave,” Johnny said.

 

 _“Dead the circuit, countdown's wrong_  
_(This chaos is killing me)”_

 

 

He was trying to warn the woman, but the girl heard him instead.

 

“Excuse you?”

 

“Nny, are you all right?” Edgar again. “You had kind of a big thing, you might want to...”

“ _Planet Earth, is control on?_  
_(So sleepy now)”_

He had more expressions than Johnny had remembered. Or at least more than one of his past selves – no, no, both of them. There's only two. He had more face than either of the other Johnnys remembered. Two against one, though. They were probably right.

 

“ _Do you wanna be free?”_

 

Splashes of red, clanging metal, crunching bone...

 

“ _Don't you wanna be free?”_

 

Wrong bone. This was his own bone. He knew how it felt to reset his jaw because Devi attacked him after he –

 

“ _Do you like girls or boys?_

 

Oh. He _hadn't_ killed her. A relief.

 

“ _It's confusing these days”_

 

But he'd tried to. He'd tried to kill Devi and then she helped him feed fortunes to a wolverine. That was how he'd chosen to repay her? No, no, those were in the wrong order. She helped him feed the wolverine and then he tried to kill her. That wasn't right either.

 

 _“But moondust will cover you_  
_Cover you_  
_So bye-bye love”_

 

The others' faces were too much to look at, too much moving and changing and getting close to him so he pressed his palms into his eyes and just tried to see stars.

 

“ _Yeah, bye-bye love”_

 

“...want you to know I'm still going to kick his ass later.”

 

“We know.”

 

Johnny frowned against his hands. That was definitely not right. “You already did,” he said. “After the knives.”

 

“ _Hallo spaceboy_  
_(Spaceboy, spaceboy, spaceboy, hallo)”_

 

He looked up to find the wrong Devi again. _Dammit._

 

“ _Hallo spaceboy_  
_You're sleepy now”_

 

She blinked at him and turned her head. “The... knives?”

 

“ _This chaos is killing me”_

 

Tenna, either faster to understand or living with less denial, grabbed Devi's bicep. “Devi. Devi, stop. Don't. This won't be --”

 

“ _This chaos is killing me”_

 

“Knives, Nny? Knives _how?”_

 

“Sorry, it wasn't you, it was the other you.” He'd meant it to be a sincere and comforting apology. It wasn't.

 

“Me?! You attacked _me?!”_

 

“ _So bye-bye love_  
_Yeah, bye-bye love”_

 

“I didn't kill you,” Johnny tried again.

 

“ _Do you wanna be free?_  
_Yes, I wanna be free”_

 

“But you _tried to! Me_! I get _Jimmy_ , but _me?!”_

 

Tenna tugged at her arm again. “Dev, stop, stop, you're gonna-”

 

“What I'm gonna do is kick his ass!”

 

Edgar slid in front of him. Johnny wasn't expecting him. The song began to break apart. “Devi, stop it! I know it's upsetting, but --”

 

“ _Do you like girls or boys?”_

 

“ _Upsetting?!_ Edgar, you have no fucking – you know what? Fuck you!”

 

She tore herself away from Tenna's grip and rather than splattering Johnny across the floor, she nearly threw herself outside. The door crunched behind her in its lopsided frame. Tenna wasted no time or breath on the others and sprinted after her, leaving Jimmy and Edgar alone with Johnny.

 

“I really liked her,” Johnny said.

 

“Nny...” Edgar looked scared. That was fair. _Johnny_ was scared.

 

“ _So bye-bye love”_

 

“I did,” Johnny insisted, since they clearly didn't understand. “It was just --”

 

\--shattered glass, dislocated jaw, blood in his eyes--

 

“ _Hallo, hallo”_

 

“Fuck.”

 

The world fell in around him like a heavy blanket and with one long exhale, he was just one more dumb kid in an abandoned choir room.

 

Jimmy had his knees hugged to his chest and Edgar had that tortured and conflicted expression he always sported when Johnny's brain attacked. Funny, they both probably desperately wanted to touch him, but Johnny sort of preferred the idea of dissipating into mist.

 

“It'll be okay,” Edgar said.

 

“What if she doesn't come back?” Jimmy asked softly. The music still on the speakers from the other room was almost louder than he was.

 

“It will _be okay_ ,” Edgar repeated. More likely to be convincing himself than Jimmy.

 

“The fuck do you know?” Jimmy snapped. Johnny remembered the tone. Remembered _sounds_.

 

“I don't, I guess. I'm just trying to --”

 

“I think we should go,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar looked at Jimmy, not for commiseration or support, but more like he was keeping an eye on a dangerous animal. He'd looked at Johnny that way before.

 

Johnny tried to look at Jimmy, but just saw organs that were waiting to be exposed, bones waiting to snap, blood waiting to be spattered against an old wooden floor. There was a scared kid who liked German music and eye makeup wrapped around it all, but there was no shaking the sight of the bones.

 

Edgar tried to soften the situation. “Nny, we can't just --”

 

“We can. And we really, really should.”

 

They left with Edgar trailing after Johnny and falling over himself trying to apologize to some organs and bones in a tattered band t-shirt.

 

 

 

 

“That could have gone better.”

 

Johnny dropped his bag on the floor and tried to see through the walls. “Yeah, like them _never knowing.”_

 

“There wasn't anything I could do! I tried, but I didn't have any other options.”

 

“I know.” Johnny sighed and fell sideways across the pink recliner. “I'm actually not blaming you.”

 

Edgar stood beside the chair and looked down at him. A familiar angle. “Can you handle this stuff?”

 

“I guess.” _Bones, broken mirrors, voices, knives, hooks, hammers, explosions of blood._ “I sort of...” Johnny swallowed and looked into the ceiling. “I always kind of suspected something like that with Jimmy. Not consciously, but it feels like it – well, it's not a _surprise_ , anyway.”

 

Edgar sat on what portion of the recliner arm Johnny had left exposed and it creaked under his weight. “But you _like_ Jimmy,” he said gently. “Even just a little.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I do. Not even just a little. But if you had to pick one of you guys for me to have murdered...?”

 

Edgar looked down at his boots. “Just not Devi, huh?”

 

“Are you... making weird assumptions?”

 

“Probably,” Edgar admitted. He left the arm of the chair with another creak and Johnny watched him wearily settle into the couch cushions.

  
“I don't have a list of people to kill in order of preference,” Johnny said. “That's not what I meant.”

 

“I know,” Edgar said, head in his hand. “I'm sorry, I'm just really...”

 

“Tired.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Me too.”

 

“I bet.”

 

Johnny joined him on the couch and leaned against his shoulder. Edgar smiled and it was the most exhausted he'd ever looked.

 

“I hope there isn't more,” Johnny said. He stared across the room at the old fireplace.

 

“That would be nice.”

 

When Johnny had attacked Jimmy, Edgar had been so confident this would work out well for them. He'd told Johnny he would be stronger than everything in his head with such certainty.

 

“Do you remember Tenna at all?” Edgar asked.

 

Now, he was checking off all the boxes that weren't him.

 

Johnny shook his head. “No. I sorta wish I did, though.”

 

Edgar only nodded.

 

It sat there with them almost as concretely as they did, though if neither of them said anything out loud, maybe it wouldn't... He wanted there to be no more memories of Edgar, he wanted Edgar to stay just the vague and pleasant impression he'd been to all of Johnny's reflections. He wanted there to be nothing new about Edgar except what happened with this one.

 

But he'd attacked Devi. He'd killed Jimmy.

 

His track record was not good.

 

He sincerely wished he'd known Tenna before, as much as he liked her now. He didn't have a 'murder by preference' list, but he would have preferred to know he'd hurt Tenna before than to have done anything at all to the tired kid trying so hard to help him. Just the idea of Edgar carrying the memory...

 

He'd have to talk to Jimmy and Devi soon.

 

 

 

 

 

The choir room was empty again, but Jimmy stayed in his chair. Somehow moving felt like he had to accept everything, like he'd decided to keep going with this new information, and he wasn't going to do that.

 

Tenna had left him without a word to chase Devi. Johnny wouldn't speak to him directly and Edgar had gone after him. The stereo that had filled the spaces while the others were here now played as the soundtrack for his thoughts.

 

“ _I forever dream within a dream_  
_Of a certain city in the sea”_

 

Edgar had tried to apologize, at least.

 

“ _As I walk the valley of unrest_ _  
__Behind this mask of crimson death”_

 

Edgar had been the problem, though. Once he showed up, there was a definite crack at the core of the group. Once Edgar had Johnny's attention, Jimmy was cut out. Devi and Tenna. Edgar and Johnny.

 

And Jimmy is here too, we guess.

 

“ _I long for a loss of breath_  
_And a most dire predicament”_

 

Johnny had murdered him. Or not really Johnny and not really Jimmy, so Johnny and Edgar said. It was better to believe they were telling the truth. Otherwise, Johnny was playing a really sick joke on him, and if even _Jimmy_ thought it was sick, it was significant.

 

“ _Murders in the rue morgue_  
_Silence and shadow's what I adore”_

 

He'd stuck it out though, even if it was a sick joke. He'd wanted to be closer to Johnny since he first saw him. He'd been the first to really trust Johnny no matter what he said, even if he hadn't been the first to meet him. Jimmy could handle this, sick joke or not. He could handle anything if it meant a link with Johnny. Meanwhile, Devi had run from Johnny, and she hadn't even been murdered.

 

She probably believed all this now.

 

...

 

Maybe if he waited here, the others would come back.

 

 _“I can’t explain just how it feels_  
_The thought of my premature burial_  
_Inside this oblong box I lie_  
_With the hopes I’ll be buried alive”_

 

 

 

 

 

He didn't think he'd meant to spend the whole night in the choir room, not exactly. He hadn't wanted to move, to commit this sudden thing to being real, but he didn't imagine sleeping there when he started the whole not moving thing. He'd sort of imagined someone would come.

 

And he'd left the stereo on.

 

He'd spent the night there with Johnny before, though it was a long time ago, when things were easier and made sense. It was fun back then, and he didn't wake up regretting having slept on a row of chairs. Instead, he'd been so excited to share something with Johnny, even if it was just waking up in the same unused classroom. He hadn't planned to find Johnny so amazing, it had just happened.

 

He also did not plan to be going to visit Edgar, but that was also happening.

 

They'd left him alone. He could take a joke, he could. He'd proved that he could and would hundreds of times. But the others hadn't been murdered, even as a joke, they didn't know what this all felt like. Even if didn't remember it, couldn't even prove it was true, it was still _there_. It still sat just under his skin and itched. He'd hoped he would remember in the hours he'd sat there alone, as fucked up as he knew that was. If he remembered being murdered, it would mean there was a connection, there was a real experience linking him to Johnny and then Jimmy could play the game too and he'd be Johnny's favorite for a few hours.

 

Edgar's house looked so normal.

 

Maybe they were talking about him there. Maybe this was all still a joke. Maybe, he thought as he climbed through the bushes out front to peer into the window, Devi and Tenna were there too, and everyone had forgotten him again.

 

When he rested his head against the glass to get a good look, he was not at all prepared for what was inside. Laughing, mocking, excluding him? He was ready with speeches for those, ready to fight.

 

He was not prepared for kissing.

 

The shock of it sent him toppling backwards through the bushes, and into the grass below.

 

_Johnny doesn't kiss, Johnny doesn't even hold hands!_

 

Were they keeping this a secret? From everyone? From just Jimmy? Did they leave him alone with _murder_ to do _this_?

 

Jimmy had tried so hard, but it was all Edgar? After he broke into the group and ruined everything? So the day Johnny met Edgar, Jimmy had lost? He remembered the angry unease he felt even speaking to Edgar back then. Maybe he'd known deep down even in the beginning.

 

He couldn't even say he was _surprised_ , exactly, it was just shocking. Real. Painful.

 

At some point, he'd climbed out of Edgar's lawn and got to his feet and then everything hit him all at once as he burst through the door, skidded with high-pitched squeaks across Edgar's floor and nearly toppled into the stair case.

 

He stood silent for only a heartbeat before his voice escaped his throat.

 

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Only it came from everyone in the room, and not just Jimmy.

 

“Are you for _real?!”_ Jimmy screeched.

 

“Are _you?!”_ Johnny countered.

 

Jimmy huffed as his chest clenched. It sounded like he'd been running rather than lurking in shrubs. “I came – I came to get you to tell me about the killing, to make sure it was real, and you guys are – come on, _really?!”_

 

“ _So start up the fire_

_and turn on all the lights”_

 

The song surged in the back of his head as Johnny took a step toward Jimmy, his hand prepared to find his knife. “What do you mean ' _really'_? What fucking difference does it make, exactly?”

 

“What? How can you – how can you _say_ that?”

 

“You're just fucking busting into my house, I can say whatever I want!”

 

Jimmy wanted to claw at his own chest. “It's _Edgar's_ house! Come on!”

 

“ _pull yourselves together_

_and get ready for a fight”_

 

Edgar stood near Johnny, flinching, biting his lip, trying to follow the conversation with Jimmy's song in the way. Johnny seemed more than happy to do all the talking.

 

“You're gonna play fucking word games with me right now? You just busted in here like you're going to arrest me!”

 

“But you – !” Jimmy choked on the air a bit, his chest still tight. “This? Him? Why didn't you _tell_ me?!”

 

“Because this is the kind of shit you do!” Johnny stepped back and let Edgar grab his elbow. Edgar was wincing and holding the side of his head. _Good._

 

“I wouldn't be if you weren't doing _this!_ Fuck, he ruined _everything_!”

 

Johnny was about to fight back and then he looked at Edgar and his eyes widened. “Fuck, are you okay?”

 

Edgar shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “I'd kind of rather he just punch me in the face than stand here songing at me.”

 

Johnny glared up at him. “Go the fuck home, Jimmy.”

 

Jimmy growled, and the sound almost startled him. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking _kidding_ me? You left me alone back there, Nny!” He pointed out the window toward the school. “You told me you'd killed me and then you all just left me there alone! This is what fucking happened. Edgar showed up, and then it was you and him and Devi and Tenna and I'm just a fucking extra! It's all him, he ruined everything!”

 

“ _because I've never been hot enough_

_and I aim to start.”_

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“No! Not bullshit! We were special! We were a _tribe_! And then you just decided he could be there and then I'm no one! You won't even let us touch you but he can... he can do _that_? This isn't _fair!_ ”

 

“What, it's not fair because you saw me first, is that it?”

 

Jimmy stomped on the floor and several things on the coffee table rattled. “No! No, no, no, it's not _about_ that! But we were so good together! Me and you and Devi and Tenna!”

 

“That's not what it was.”

 

“Yes it _was!_ ”

 

“ _Never been hot enough...”_

 

Edgar shook his head and looked up at Jimmy, still with a hand on Johnny's arm. Jimmy tried to glare at him, but his lip was quivering now to match the trembling tightness in his chest and he wasn't sure he managed the threatening look he wanted.

 

“You still...” Jimmy swallowed, trying to calm his heart or his lip or his head. “You still left me there, you still just said you'd killed me and then you all left.”

 

“It wasn't exactly sunshine for me, either. You'll survive.”

 

“You had _him_! I had nothing! Why not just _stay?”_

 

Johnny looked up and stared into him. He was shorter and smaller than Jimmy, but as he stood there, tense, quiet, eyes threatening and ringed in black, Jimmy was afraid. Suddenly Johnny reaching for his knife didn't look like a reflex, suddenly the anger looked so real it threatened to engulf him. Johnny was the most beautiful thing Jimmy had ever known, and he was _terrifying._

 

“Because I wasn't totally sure I wouldn't do it again.”

 

“ _And I aim to start_.”

 

Jimmy stepped back, self preservation overriding admiration. He pressed his hands to his chest, trying to keep himself breathing. “You... _now_? Me? Real me?”

 

“The stuff in my head can't tell the difference.” It wasn't reassuring, it wasn't an explanation or an apology, it just _was_. There was nothing in Johnny's eyes now, no hate, no apology, no feeling. He was absolutely serious about what he'd claimed he'd seen and done. It was real because of what it did to Johnny's eyes.

 

And _still_ Jimmy wished he'd remembered. He believed Johnny, like he always did, and he still wished he could remember it happening. He still wished he knew what he'd been like, what Johnny had been like, what he had done, and how he'd looked while he did it. Distantly, Jimmy found hope in having left enough of an imprint that Johnny remembered him two lifetimes later.

 

“And what about him?” Jimmy asked, nodding toward Edgar. “Just bestest friends kissing forever? No paralyzing him or something? He doesn't get to do this too?”

 

Johnny looked at Edgar, who seemed cautiously aware he was being spoken about.

 

“Go home, Jimmy,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar sighed next to him. “I still don't know entirely what I'm hearing, but you can still just hit me if that will make all this less irritating to you somehow.”

 

The frustrating thing was that Jimmy really kind of liked Edgar. Edgar as a concept had ruined everything, had stolen Johnny, had wormed his way in and made sure Jimmy ended up in the gutter. But the reality of Edgar? Isolated human-shaped thing Edgar? He wasn't bad. He was kind of fun. Jimmy could see why Johnny liked him if he looked at it objectively.

 

He still wanted to hit him.

 

If they had been alone, he would have. But Johnny was here too, and Johnny always carried a knife, and this was the first time Jimmy felt real fear when he looked at him.

 

“Some other time,” Jimmy said. “When you can fucking hear what I'm saying to you.”

 

He tried to walk out dramatically, but more of him wanted to run, so it was something of a stunted shuffle.

 

He left Edgar's house at an awkward jog with the image of Johnny's eyes burned in his mind. Flecks of gold among brown, but sharper and colder than Jimmy had ever seen them. They made him run faster, harder. They made his heart pound in his ears and made him consider his own death more than an entire night of processing 'murder' had.

 

And they were so damn beautiful.

 

 

 

 

It was such a relief when Jimmy left, and not just because he'd elected not to punch Edgar in the face.

 

The song had been unstoppable and borderline unbearable. Nearly all of Jimmy's words had been replaced with an assault from the lyrics. Edgar understood the general shape of the conversation – Jimmy upset about him and Johnny – but the specifics were impossible to grasp, even when he could hear Johnny's replies.

 

“You okay?” Johnny asked.

 

“I'll live. That was somehow both worse and better than I imagined it would be.”

 

“Good?”

 

Edgar smiled. “Why didn't he hit me?”

 

Johnny glanced at the floor. “I think he was afraid to.”

 

“Afraid? Of you?”

 

Johnny shrugged and rubbed his arms. Edgar thought it best to let things stay light.

 

“At least he knows now, right? That makes things easier.”

 

“I suppose.”

 

Something was still wrong, and something was still missing.

 

“You're okay, right?” Edgar asked.

 

“Pfft, you know better than to ask me that.”

 

“Okay, then are you at least not worse?”

 

“I … think so?”

 

“That's not terribly encouraging.”

 

“It's what I've got.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“He thinks you ruined everything,” Johnny said abruptly.

 

“What? How?”

 

“Just by being here.”

 

“Fuck him too, jeez. I know he likes you a lot, but I didn't ruin _everything._ ”

 

Johnny laughed and it looked like he was going to be normal again. “He was asking about us and talked about kissing but still called you my bestest friend in the room or something and it--”

 

Johnny stopped short, took a sharp breath, and looked at Edgar, his eyes wide.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing!” Johnny hunched his shoulders and wrapped several fingers around his necklace. His voice shook when spoke again. “It's nothing.”

 

“Nny, you need to stop lying about this stuff.”

 

“ _No._ ”

 

There was a genuine fear on Johnny's face and Edgar sincerely worried about making him confront it as much as he wanted to make him stop pretending nothing was happening to him.

 

“Did you remember something?”

 

“Bestest friend in the room?” Johnny replied weakly.

 

When Edgar heard the phrase again, it struck something in him like a bell. It was a quiet ping, but it started something he felt he couldn't stop.

 

Up above. He'd remembered being above Johnny, but still alone in the room with him. He'd remembered the start of it exactly the same, but twice. The path forked there and in his mind he clawed toward the side he knew was the more pleasant, but he was pulled instead toward the burst of red, the sudden black, the searing, shredding, slicing.

 

He blinked at Johnny, his vision a little blurred.

 

“Me. You killed _me.”_

 

“No! No, no, no, not me, remember?” Johnny stepped forward, desperately clinging to the necklace, hints of tears in the corners of his eyes. “It's someone else, not me.”

 

“Just like Jimmy,” Edgar said, the red splashing into black in his head over and over.

 

“No. No, no.” Johnny reached out to Edgar with one hand and for the first time he could remember, Edgar backed away from him. Johnny gasped like he'd been struck.

 

Edgar had heard Johnny say to Jimmy that he 'wasn't sure he wouldn't do it again'. Because of Jimmy, he hadn't known what 'it' was, but now? Now he knew, and now he was scared. What if Edgar woke up to knives or was pushed off the roof or down the stairs? Even while the scenarios flashed through Edgar's mind, Johnny stood in front of him teary-eyed, terrified, and nearly strangling himself with the hold he had on his necklace.

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar said. “I just need a minute.”

 

“You're afraid of me,” Johnny whispered.

 

Edgar licked his lip, swallowed, tried to breathe normally. “No, no, I'm just... surprised.”

 

“You're _afraid of me!”_ Johnny screamed. “You spent all that time saying, 'Oh, no Nny, it wasn't you, it's okay, everything's fine,' but now it's affecting _you_ so it was _me_ and you _need a minute!”_

 

 _“_ What else do you want me to do?! I'm _trying!_ For fuck's sake, Nny, you didn't let me tell anyone about this stuff! I had no help dealing with any of it when it was just you, and I was struggling with _just that!_ Now I'm supposed to deal with remembering you _killing me_ like it's nothing?”

 

“You don't think this is horrible for me?”

 

“I _know_ it is! I believed you from the start! I see what it does to you! Devi didn't believe you until she remembered what you did! I get it!”

 

“But you're _afraid of me!_ You said you _trusted_ me.”

 

“I _do_ , I just can't support us both at the same time!”

 

He hoped he _did_ still trust Johnny. He thought he did, mostly, but there was this little knot in his guts now gathering all the doubt he'd ever had and twisting it tightly around a spool of 'He Killed Me' that was hard to ignore. He'd known when he met Johnny that the idea of him remembering things was a little scary and should be approached lightly. He'd been concerned about the sounds he remembered and what they meant. When had he lost track of that?

 

Johnny wiped his eye with the back of his hand. His shoulders hunched as he wrapped his arms around himself, digging his fingernails into his upper arms.

 

“I'm going to go get some air,” Edgar said gently. “I'll be back.”

 

Johnny only folded himself into the pink recliner with a huff.

 

 

 

 

He felt some twisting guilt for leaving Johnny alone as he rounded the corner of the block, and then had to try to stop himself.

 

_No. I can't always be taking care of him. He lived in a choir room by himself for years, he can deal with this. And it's just until I can think again._

 

He walked the familiar sidewalk with a feeling like his heart would burst, though it could also have been a desire to vomit.

 

_Just because he’s remembering it doesn't mean he will do the same thing. Hell, he only did it once. I lived the second time._

 

He almost laughed as he stood on the corner imagining someone saying, 'It's fine, he only killed me once,' as justification for a relationship on television.

 

He didn't know where he was going, but he could see everything from this corner. Devi and Tenna's house, Jimmy's trailer, and the corner of the school choir room.

 

Splashes of red, clanging, cracking and snapping, black.

 

He'd wondered about what kind of person it made him that he stuck with Johnny despite what had to be obvious murder all around him. He'd worried about his past selves condoning it when he should have been worried about whether they'd fallen victim to it.

 

He sat down on the sidewalk, slightly dizzy, and closed his eyes.

 

When they first met, he'd tried to be cautious. He didn't remember _this,_ but there were sounds and notions that it had not been wonderful. He'd had hints of sticky floors. He'd even remembered a little blood that he'd convinced himself wasn't relevant or even _there_ once he started finding Johnny so charming. He never expected it all to be this bad, but he knew he wouldn't have this drive to make sure Johnny was happy if _something_ hadn't been awful.

 

He'd known. He remembered another Johnny agreeing to this life on the condition that he not remember anything awful. But the excitement of being able to talk to other people and Johnny being so _incredible_ had faded it all away and replaced it with bleeding on rooftops and stealing cupcakes from preschools. He'd become so wrapped up in Johnny that he had stopped listening to things he should have and may have accidentally helped break a promise to the version of Johnny that had died to make his Johnny.

 

Devi was right: Edgar _had_ been making excuses. She and Tenna were also right about this being a bad idea in general, but they couldn't have known this particular bad, could they? Devi seemed genuinely hurt and surprised when she found out Johnny had attacked her...

 

When he heard the sound of large boots next to him, he expected Johnny.

 

What he got when he opened his eyes was _Jimmy_.

 

“The hell's wrong with you?” Jimmy nudged him with the toe of his boot like he was inspecting roadkill.

 

“Nothing,” Edgar answered automatically.

 

“You actually understand me?”

 

Edgar blinked at his shoes and then squinted up at Jimmy. “Yeah.”

 

“Shame,” Jimmy said. He spat a piece of gum into the road in front of them and offered his hand. “Can you get up?”

 

Touched as he was by the gesture, Edgar's head was still not in a good place and he didn't exactly trust Jimmy. “I think I still need a minute.”

 

Jimmy shrugged and dropped to the sidewalk next to him. He crossed his legs, gripped his ankles and rocked back, inhaling deeply. “What happened?”

 

Edgar pressed his fingers into his temples. “I – aren't you mad at me right now?”

 

“Mostly just the concept of you. Actual you is okay.”

 

“Um… okay?”

 

“Here.” Jimmy punched his shoulder and nearly knocked him into the street.

 

“Ow! Fuck! What are you doing?!”

 

“We're good now,” Jimmy said simply. “So what happened?”

 

Edgar swallowed once as he rubbed his shoulder and then sighed. “I... remembered some stuff.”

 

Jimmy curled forward and frowned. “Oh. You too, huh?”

 

“Did you – ?”

 

“No,” Jimmy said, bitterly flinging a rock across the street.

 

“Can I … Can I make a suggestion?”

 

Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go.”

 

“Don't try to remember. You're better off not.”

 

“Yeah, well, we all told you that you were better off not going after Nny, but here we are.”

 

Edgar nodded, unwilling to repeat the events from the morning. “Yeah, I guess. This is just kind of difficult to sit with. I don't think you'd be happy with it.”

 

Jimmy sat in silence but for his boot grinding against the grit of the sidewalk. Edgar thought he might get up and leave.

 

“I mean, do what you want,” Edgar said, “I just--”

 

Jimmy ran his palm over the concrete. “What did you remember? Was it like Devi?”

 

“No.” Edgar looked up at him. “It was a lot worse. He...”

 

He thought about how to sugar coat it, and then was concerned that he wanted to.

 

“He killed me.”

 

Jimmy leaned closer to Edgar and narrowed his eyes. “He killed _you_? I thought he said it was _me._ ”

 

Edgar tried to smile. “I guess it’s both of us.”

 

“But _you_ remember it.”

 

“Jimmy, I promise you don't want to remember this. This has not made my life any cooler.”

 

Jimmy did not look convinced.

 

Edgar hoped to derail this particular line of conversation. “Have you heard from Devi?”

 

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Why would she call _me_? She's got Tenna.”

 

“You didn't call Tenna?”

 

Jimmy shrugged and picked at the sole of his boot. “She's got Devi.”

 

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

 

“For...?”

 

“That no one talked to you. No wonder you tried to break through my door.”

 

Jimmy stopped picking at his boot. “...You're fucking weird, Edgar.”

 

Shoulders sagging, Edgar sighed. It really was not worth the effort. “Okay.”

 

“In a good way, I think.”

 

“That’s better, I guess.”

 

Red, metal and bone, black.

 

Edgar pushed his glasses into hair and rubbed his eyes, even though the shit he was seeing was in his head. How long would he be suddenly remembering this? Had it happened to his prior self?

 

“What now?” Jimmy asked.

 

“Now?”

 

“You still doing your thing with Nny now that you have this? What's gonna happen with Devi? What if we all stop seeing each other?”

 

Edgar kept his hands on his eyes. It all scared him too, but distantly, like it was all something that would be coming once he'd drilled through a brick wall with a spoon. Worth considering down the road, but really not an immediate priority.

 

“I don't know. I'm still sort of dealing with this whole murder thing. It’s kind of distracting.”

 

Jimmy bumped his shoulder and Edgar winced. “Hey, hey, can I ask you something?”

 

“I think you're going to anyway.”

 

“What did he do to you?”

 

Edgar picked up his head and removed his hands from his eyes. “Fucking _seriously_?”

 

“Just wondered,” Jimmy said quietly.

 

“He _tore me apart._ Okay? Strapped me into some _thing_ and _shredded me._ ”

 

“Oh,” Jimmy said reverently. “Do you remember how it felt?”

 

_Holy shit, why couldn't it have been Tenna out here?_

 

“I don't want to talk about this like this anymore.”

 

“Okay.”

 

They sat on the sidewalk staring off into the distance. Without Jimmy's weird questions, it was almost relaxing, though the memories that were not his did their best to ruin it. What the hell had happened the second lifetime around that Edgar had wanted to make Johnny _happy_ and not _extinct_?

 

He wasn't sure he still wanted to make Johnny happy, and at the same time wanted nothing else. For the first time in a long time, he worried about whether that was someone else's motivation trying to direct him. What if all of this had been the influence of the guy just behind him in the mirror? The one who had allowed Johnny to do so much of what he was now remembering, the one Johnny hadn't killed.

 

...how had he died the second time?

 

“This is such a fucking mess,” Edgar muttered, though he was thinking out loud more than talking to Jimmy.

 

“Nny is good at that.”

 

Edgar nodded and pulled his hands down his face.

 

Freezies and movies and tense conversation and a connection just barely defined. None of the blood was his, but he could see it now as though he'd removed a filter. His other self had seen the blood, had known what Johnny did, and still went for drinks and movies and shopping trips. He'd done nothing himself, but he'd enabled casual horror with every convenience store coupon.

 

Was he some twisted creature looking out for his own? Is that where making Johnny _happy_ had come from?

 

Johnny was right when he accused Edgar of not wanting to face the possibility that he was a monster too. Johnny had lured him in and made him have so much fun that it was easy to pretend it wasn't a problem again almost as soon as he considered it. But now it was all he could think about.

 

_Still, there was no way we could have known, right?_

 

He wasn't sure that this wasn't another excuse.

 

Next to him, Jimmy was humming, and then let it slide into hushed words.

 

 _“I can’t explain just how it feels_  
_The thought of my premature burial_  
_Inside this oblong box I lie  
With the hopes I’ll be buried alive”_

 

 _After all this, he really chose that song?_ “Jimmy.”

 

“Mmn?”

 

“Can you not?”

 

“Wha- Oh! Sorry. It's... it's stuck in my head today.”

 

“It's going to be stuck in mine now too, fuck you. What the hell is wrong with you?”

 

“The same thing that's wrong with you, Johnny just likes you for it.”

 

Edgar tried to say something profound or sharp but ended up feeling a bit dumb.

 

“While we're on the subject,” Jimmy said, “I want to ask you for a favor.”

 

“A _favor_? You remember that you broke into my house this morning and assaulted my brain, right?”

 

“Yeah, but you rewrote my whole world a year ago and stole everything I wanted. And it's not a big favor.”

 

Edgar shook his head and briefly turned his palms to the sky. “Okay, what?”

 

“Will you tell me if this is a game? If Nny's just making it up?”

 

“He's not.”

 

“I mean it. If you're really sorry I spent the night alone with murder, tell me it's real.”

 

“It's real,” Edgar said. “I promise.”

 

Jimmy stared at him intently, then blinked once and sat back. “Okay. I'm gonna trust you. Because you were a murdered one, too.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Jimmy snickered. “It's sorta fucked up, isn't it?”

 

“Sorta _a lot_ , yes.”

 

Jimmy laughed again. “You're okay, Edgar.”

 

Edgar looked beseechingly into the sky, palms up. “ _God_ , is that all it took? You didn't have to bust into my house this morning? We could have just had a _song_ and vague honesty together?”

 

“No, that's a different thing,” Jimmy 'explained.' “That's the concept of you. This is just you.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“Do you want me to leave?”

 

Edgar shook his head. Jimmy was fucking weird, but the company and the severely warped distractions were nice. “I don't know what I want.”

 

“Okay then.”

 

Jimmy didn't say anything else to him while they sat. They both ended up humming the vastly inappropriate song together, it even escalated to some very strange singing, but they exchanged no conversation.

 

 _“The oval portrait upon the wall_  
_Will someday cause this house to fall_  
_The power of words left unsaid_  
_As I join the spirits of the dead_  
  
_I can't explain just how it feels_  
_The thought of my premature burial_  
_Inside this oblong box I lie_  
_With the hopes I’ll be buried alive”_

 

Edgar had difficulty not crying and wiped his eyes frequently, but the expected mockery did not come. Jimmy only nodded like he understood and stared into the street, keeping the song up all along.

 

 _Well, I’m the man who's used up_  
_Washed up_  
_Bricked up_  
  
_Descent into maelstrom_  
_Bedlam_  
_Redrum_  
  
_Bet the devil my head_  
_Misled_  
_Bloodshed_  
  
_Heart under the floorboards_  
_Beats for_  
_Lenore_  
_Nevermore_  
  
_I can’t explain just how it feels_  
_The thought of my premature burial_  
_Inside this oblong box I lie_  
_With the hopes I’ll be buried alive_

 

When he felt either hungry or nauseated, Edgar decided it was his cue to go home and try to figure himself out. He pulled himself to his feet and Jimmy did the same. For a few terrifying seconds, Edgar thought Jimmy would follow him home.

 

“Good luck,” Jimmy said, offering his hand. “You can stay with me if he kicks you out.”

 

Edgar took his hand. “Um, it's _my_ house.”

 

Jimmy shrugged and grinned at him. “Offer still stands.”

 

 

As Edgar walked back up the street, Jimmy's song trailed after him.

 

 

“ _I ain't never been hot enough_

_but I aim to start”_

 

For the first time, Edgar found it very welcome.

 

 

 

He returned home expecting to find the house covered in blood and broken CD shards, but found nothing of the sort. He was not even sure anything had moved except Johnny, who was no longer in the pink recliner.

 

_He wouldn’t have done something to himself, right?_

 

He didn’t want to deal with Johnny at the moment, but also didn’t want him dead. All Edgar wanted was a sandwich and maybe a book about sunshine or princesses or something that was not likely to end in murder.

 

“Nny?”

 

In response, the faint music from upstairs increased in volume. Edgar sighed in relief. They didn’t have to speak and Edgar knew he wasn’t dead. Johnny was probably just as relieved.

 

He made himself the sandwich, but he had trouble looking at the jelly.

 

As he flipped through the channels on television, the plots and dialog all blurred together. Drama, comedy, game show, it didn’t matter, nothing distracted him. All his focus lingered on this memory he had that no one should ever have. It made sense to die because all parts of a body had been severely damaged if not totally severed, but Edgar thought it was just as possible that people died because their heads couldn’t handle carrying the memory of the event.

 

He abandoned the television and started upstairs to find a book or maybe even Johnny. The music from Johnny’s bedroom continued loud, intrusive, and likely intended to block out his memories in the same way Edgar had tried to use the television. He was hit with a sudden flash of blood, metal, and snapping bone, followed by a fierce wave of nausea that dragged him into the bathroom.

 

He threw up most of the sandwich.

 

He was not 'okay', but until he was in the bathroom, he felt like this could be something he'd get over by sleeping on it and taking things a day at time, accepting it over the passing months. It would be something unpleasant that he knew about, but it wouldn't be something that could take control of him. He could do some kind of group therapy with Jimmy and Devi and they’d all bond over shared love of a person who had had designs on their continued existence in another life.

 

But there was a mirror in the bathroom.

 

Gashes and bleeding wounds lashed across the face of his oldest reflection. Bits of red muscle and yellow fat poked out from bruised holes that should not have been there. His glasses were shattered and his eyes – if they were even still there -- could not be read through all the red and black matted flesh around them. He was splattered all over with blood. If he hadn’t had to be a reflection, Edgar suspected the last face would be just goo. A long split traveled diagonally from the hairline, between his eyes, and over his cheek to his jaw. Edgar traced the line silently on his own face and watched the reflections do the same. He had deep gashes and dark bruises around his wrists.

 

_And Johnny did this._

 

His body lurched and he threw up almost nothing. He turned on the faucet and held his face into the streaming water, rinsing his mouth and imagining the water taking all the blood away. He stepped back, hair dripping and glasses spattered, when he started imagining the water washing away his whole face.

 

 

 

 

 

Devi imagined that she'd feel better after a month or two of sitting angrily in her studio and painting until the images she churned out stopped being angry. She'd have been content to try to work out her feelings by simply burning them out and then she'd go steal lunch with Johnny again in about four weeks like nothing was wrong.

 

Tenna was on a quicker time table, however. She'd spent the night sitting with Devi, listening to her yell, picking up after her when she threw things, and passing her paint when she couldn't think straight anymore.

 

“I'm just here to make sure you're okay.” She'd said it over and over, and in response to almost everything. It should have been infuriating, and yet Devi had never been happier to have her around.

 

“After all I did for that little shit, he pulls this! We met _first!  W_ ithout me, he might never have known other people could see him at all!” She flung red paint at the canvas, but a good portion of it splattered on the wall.

 

“You could be right,” Tenna said.

 

“Like does he have any _idea,”_ a swipe with a palette knife _,_ “how fucking sick it is to do this?”

 

“Probably not,” Tenna said.

 

“God, I don't know how you are just sitting there.”

 

“I'm just here to make sure you're okay.”

 

Before Devi knew it, Tenna had put a bowl of pasta and a bar of chocolate in front of her. “You should eat. It'll make you feel better.”

 

Maybe it was the pasta, maybe it was Tenna, but she did sort of feel better, even if she was still furious.

 

“What does he even expect when he says bullshit like that?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“It's like he just takes it for granted that we're stuck with him.”

 

“I get that.”

 

“I don't know what the fuck he's gonna do if we all just say 'no' one day.”

 

“Be by himself, I would think.”

 

“Right? Thank you.”

 

“I'm just here to make sure you're okay.”

 

“Oh, I'll be _okay_ , all right. It's Nny who should be worried about being okay. He is due an ass kicking.”

 

“Sounds good.”

 

Devi looked back at her. “Does it really? You usually frown on the ass kicking part.”

 

“I meant the you being okay part. But the ass kicking doesn't sound _terrible_ as long as you guys destroy each other in a sportsman-like fashion.”

 

Devi shrugged and went back to her painting.

 

When the phone rang, Devi screamed at a volume she'd forgotten she could reach in hopes that whoever was on the other end would hear it without her having to pick it up.

 

Tenna answered for her. “Jimmy's House of Quality Ass Meats. We have all the Ass Flavors. Delivery or pick up?” She waited politely for several seconds, and then whoever was on the other line hung up.

 

“Wrong number,” Tenna said.

 

“I wonder what gave them that idea.”

 

Tenna grinned at her.

 

“Is that what I keep you around for?”

 

“I'm just here to make sure you're okay.”

 

“Do you remember the time you put a piece of bologna in a CD case for me and shoved it under my door when you didn't think I was getting enough sun?”

 

“...Yeees?”

 

“Was that making sure I was okay, too?”

 

“Yes?”

 

She wanted to ask about how all the meat puns in the track listing, or even the meat in general, was supposed to make her okay, but if she hadn't gotten an answer about the bologna in all this time, she was unlikely to drag it out now.

 

“Okay. That's fine.”

 

Several hours later, while Devi was still painting (though just the canvas now and not the wall), Tenna said, “Hey, would you do me a favor? Would you try to get some sleep? You'll probably paint better that way, right?”

 

Devi knew what she was doing, but appreciated it anyway. She sighed and rinsed her brushes without the fuss she expected of herself and did as Tenna asked.

 

She was surprised to find out she could fall asleep so quickly.

 

She dreamed of putting bologna in Johnny's stereo.

 

In the morning, she wandered from her room to find Tenna in the kitchen. “Hey, I made you some breakfast!”

 

“Uh, thanks.”

 

“I'm just here to make sure you're okay.”

 

Devi smiled at her and left her to whatever she was doing in favor of spacing out on the couch.

 

When Tenna brought a plate to the couch while Devi watched a rerun of The Flying Dutchman Hour, something clicked. Tenna was only partly invisible. She could stop this silly nonsense with having to deal with Johnny's brain and go live among normal people any time she wanted. Instead, she chose to pretend to haunt a converted house and steal food with Devi.

 

“Ten?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I think I will be. I think I _will_ be okay.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Really. I know Nny hasn't ever technically done worse, but I think I'll be able to work with this. You know, eventually. This while 'dealing' thing went better than I thought it would.”

 

Tenna grinned at her. “You told me this was gonna take a month.”

 

“Maybe if you hadn't gotten involved, it would have.”

 

“Good.” Tenna pulled out her skeleton toy, squeaked it, and set it on the tray of food she'd brought to Devi. “Spooky will keep you positive while I finish burning my food.”

 

It took them all morning to get rid of the smell of scorched pancake.

 

 

Just after lunch, Devi heard the main door of their house slam, and then heavy boots taking the stairs. When there was a knock at the door, she and Tenna exchanged worried looks.

 

“I'll get it,” Tenna said. “Don't move unless I give the signal,” and she scuffled off to the door.

 

The door latch clicked and Tenna gasped loudly when she opened the door. That was not the signal, but Devi nearly jumped over the furniture.

 

“Ten? You okay?”

 

“I'm sorry,” she heard Tenna say, “ I just --”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“ _Jimmy_?” Devi called out.

 

She heard the door close and Tenna returned to the room with Jimmy slowly trailing behind her.

 

“Hey,” he said. He gestured to Tenna. “I just came to see – ”

 

“It's fine,” Devi told him, feeling oddly charitable. She cleared some art supplies from the other end of their stolen couch. “Sit if you want.”

 

“I was worried you weren't going to talk to us anymore,” Jimmy explained.

 

Devi sighed and set her drink on the table. “I wasn't going to not talk to _you_ , weird as that is.” As she spoke, he brightened a little. “Probably not even Edgar, though I'll have to think about him.”

 

Tenna tucked herself into the torn plush chair near Jimmy's end of the couch and sat quietly, probably pleased that Devi had connected with her feelings or some shit.

 

“Not Nny?” Jimmy asked.

 

“I don't – how is it _you_ asking _me_ that? After everything he said?”

 

Jimmy shrugged, but it wasn't apologetic. “I like him.”

 

Devi retrieved her drink and it fizzed as it sloshed in the can. “Do you think you'd like him if you had your choice of anyone else? If people could see you and you had someone else to talk to?”

 

Jimmy glanced at his knees, and then back up at Devi. “Yeah.”

 

He was hard to look at – sincere and scared and mostly ridiculous. “I've been thinking about that myself,” Devi said. “ _Really_ thinking. And I don't know if I would.”

 

Tenna smiled sadly at her. “Devi, you're this angry with him _because_ you like him. We all do.”

 

“I didn't say I don't _now_. Just that if things had been different, if we didn't pretty much _have_ to like him, I might not.”

 

Jimmy nervously wove his fingers into the fishnet glove covering his arm. “Why not?”

 

“He's an asshole, Jimmy.”

 

“We all are, though.”

 

“Not like he is. Not like that.”

 

“He can't help the murder thing.”

 

Devi frowned. “Do you know that for sure? What if this is just some sick game and he's making it all up? I've been suspicious of his bullshit since we met. This would not be unlike him.”

 

“If it was a game, he wouldn't have done it to Edgar too,” Jimmy said quietly.

 

Tenna sat up straight. “Edgar?”

 

“I just talked to him. We had sort of a big thing this morning. He said they remembered that Nny killed Edgar too.”

 

“Shit,” Tenna whispered.

 

Devi took a drink and shook her head. It was hard to know what to think. As much as she'd tried to warn Edgar away from getting too emotionally invested in Johnny, just for the sake of his own safety, it really had looked like Johnny was genuinely fond of Edgar all this time. Would he really pull shit this complex? Would Johnny have gone to the lengths of charming Edgar to the point of sneaking around with him in order to orchestrate this complicated fuckery a year later?

 

“I also saw them kissing this morning,” Jimmy added casually.

 

“Oh,” Devi said.

 

He laughed bitterly. “Heh. I figured you guys already knew about it.”

 

“Shit,” Tenna said. “You have had _a day._ ”

 

He grinned at her. “Right? And it's only lunch time. I'll probably die in my sleep the way this is going.”

 

Devi leaned away from him. “I thought you'd take it harder.”

 

“Oh, I broke into Edgar's house,” he said with a 'not to worry' wave of his hand.

 

“Ah. There it is.”

 

Tenna inclined her head like she was inspecting Jimmy's face for involuntary twitching. “Are you three okay? Do we need to stage an intervention?”

 

Jimmy shook his head. “We're okay. Edgar and I bonded over murder. And we sang about dying. We're cool.”

 

“There's something really wrong with you,” Devi told him. “Are you aware of that?”

 

He smiled at her. “Then the exact same thing is wrong with Edgar.”

 

Devi could not remember the last time Jimmy had genuinely made her smile. “Okay, point.”

 

“I wish someone had told me, though. For you guys to know and not say anything...”

 

Tenna looked sincerely remorseful, but Devi was unmoved and still felt entirely justified. “Well, you know, we figured you'd flip out. You know, _break into his house_ or something.”

 

He waved his hands in a weak mockery of Johnny's usual theatrics. “Ta-daaaa.”

 

Tenna playfully punched his shoulder. “Hey, listen, do you want to stay with me for a bit?”

 

Devi frowned, though she hadn't meant to.

 

Jimmy glanced rapidly between Devi and Tenna before trying to answer her. He put a hand on his chest. “Me?”

 

“Yeah, you, dipshit. Who the fuck else?”

 

“Um... yeah, wow, okay!”

 

Jimmy probably needed more help than Devi did anyway. Devi hadn't been murdered, just attacked.

 

She didn't remember any of it either, though she kept that a bit quiet. She wasn't sure why, exactly. She hoped it wasn't that she felt something was lacking about her that she couldn't play Johnny's stupid game. If she did remember, it would at least tell her that all this was real. As it was, she hovered in some kind of trust limbo about the whole situation.

 

Regardless, Jimmy was actually had it worse, so as much as she wanted to protest that she hadn't yet completed using Tenna as a sanity preserver, she let it go. Tenna's desire to help people who were complete disasters was part of her appeal, really.

 

She watched Tenna gave Jimmy a high-five, and then Jimmy surprised her.

 

“Are you sure though? You don't to stay with Devi?”

 

Tenna looked up her. “Oh, well... I mean, I'm just one floor up. We're practically roommates. So, we're fine, right?”

 

Devi shook her head. “We're fine.”

 

Tenna looked immensely relieved and Jimmy hesitated a bit, swallowed, and nodded. “Okay.”

 

“You'll be okay,” Tenna patted Jimmy's head and grinned at Devi. “We probably all will. We can figure this shit out.”

 

Jimmy stayed there the rest of the night, and the rest of the week. He ate meals with them while they ignored Johnny and Edgar, helped Devi rearrange her studio, and had late night dance parties with Tenna upstairs until they both passed out from exhaustion. He brought his guitar and they sat and sang in the dark until someone inevitably mentioned Johnny.

 

Devi couldn't remember when she'd seen Jimmy cry before, or even if she ever had, but while Jimmy explained his frustration with what had happened, tears flowed freely. It made him a smeary mess and if it had happened at any other time, Devi would have made fun of him. Now, Tenna hugged him and Devi found herself listening to him and not worrying so much about keeping her distance. Maybe Jimmy was a species of human after all.

 

He didn't go back up to Tenna's floor that night, and neither did Tenna. She and Jimmy set up a pillow fort in the living room and Devi joined them. While she contorted herself among her couch cushions and all of Tenna's pillows, Devi caught herself enjoying spending time with Jimmy.

 

“The show talked about how certain experiences in childhood actually affect how you turn out as an adult,” Jimmy explained. “So, I'm sitting there thinking, 'Where did I get any of this?'”

 

Tenna gathered an armful of pillow and rested her chin on it. “Shit, I don't know.”

 

Devi shook her head. “Did we already have formative childhood experiences, somehow?”

 

“I don't think they're formative if you don't remember them,” Jimmy said. “They can't guide who you are if they don't exist, can they?”

 

She almost hated to do this, but it seemed critical to help Jimmy really think about what was happening, rather than just be frustrated about it. “So you think if memories _do_ exist, if you have them, they affect who you are?”

 

Jimmy and Tenna stared nervously at her in silence for several seconds. Jimmy dropped his gaze and picked at a hole in his t-shirt. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Kinda.”

 

Tenna shrugged apologetically. “It's why I wanted to, you know, quiz him or something.”

 

Devi nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

 

“Is he going to change?” Jimmy asked.

 

“He might have already.”

 

“It's weird,” Tenna said. “It's like I'm worried about it and I'm worried about him, but they're two separate things. I like him, and this is fucked up shit that is happening, but I also don't wanna get surprise murdered or anything.”

 

“But it's okay if you see the murder coming?” Devi asked.

 

Tenna threw a pillow at her. “You knew what I meant.”

 

“Do you feel different?” Jimmy asked Devi.

 

“Why would _I_ feel different?”

 

“With remembering Johnny...”

 

“Oh.” She drummed on the cushion in front of her. “I don't, actually. Why would I think this was a game if I had the same memories?"

 

Jimmy's eyes went wide, and Devi thought she spotted the start of tears. “I thought maybe you - It's not just me?”

 

“No.”

 

“Fuck,” he sniffed. “That's a first.”

 

“Then here's another one:” Devi told him. “I'm sorry. We probably shouldn't have let things be just you so often.”

 

He smiled at her. “Jeez, wow. Thanks.”

 

“I _told_ you other people liked you,” Tenna said, reaching over to punch his arm.

 

“Edgar said the same thing to me. About being sorry.”

 

“Edgar is terminally good inside, I think,” Tenna said. “I don't know what he ever did in a past life to get stuck with all of us. Probably ate kittens or some shit.”

 

Devi shook her head. “Well, good luck getting an apology like that from Nny, anyway.”

 

Tenna snorted into her pillow. “Yeah, don't hold your breath for that one.”

 

“Nah, I know,” Jimmy sighed. “It's fine.”

 

“That was nice of Edgar, though,” Devi conceded. “Shame he's such a nice dude wrapped around Johnny.”

 

Jimmy tapped his hands on his thighs. “If you'd like to campaign to get Nny a less-nice dude wrapped around him, you know where I live.”

 

“Unfortunately,” Devi said.

 

He kicked at her and she laughed and she rolled back into the cushions. It was genuine for once, and not mocking or sarcastic at all. Where did this Jimmy come from?

 

Every night ended this way after that. Strange sleepover in a blanket fort with Jimmy and Tenna talking about the documentaries Jimmy had watched and the implications of them in the every day life of invisible musical teenagers.

 

It was a week and a half from the day they learned about murder before any of them heard from Johnny and Edgar.

 

 

 

 

The biggest problem he had was how quickly things changed. One day, he was enduring a strange crush, keeping some secrets and occasionally considering that he had some odd memories. A few days later, he was kissing, exposing secrets left and right, and his mind was obsessed with remembering murder.

 

_This relationship might last a week, and then it’ll be awkward our whole lives. No wonder Nny was so twisted up about the idea of people pairing up._

 

He hadn’t heard from Devi or Tenna, which was disappointing, but not unexpected. They were probably coping on their own and punishing Edgar with the same silence. Strangely enough, he felt like he deserved to be punished, and he didn’t even resent them for their lack of contact.

 

As for Johnny, Edgar didn’t know what to think or how to behave. It had been horrible of him to get angry at Edgar’s fear, but he was also _enduring_ something horrible at the same time, and Edgar knew exactly how horrible it was. As much as he wanted to understand, though, he still couldn’t stop jumping when Johnny made a loud or sudden noise. He tensed when he saw Johnny with so much as a butter knife and even when he simply heard the sounds of utensils rattling against each other in the drawer.

 

They didn’t speak much now, and the closeness Edgar had cherished so much had almost entirely vanished. The problem wasn’t Johnny, however. Johnny was sending out all the signals that he wanted everything back the way it was: he held his arms around himself often, his fingers were always twisted in his necklace, he was jumpy and clearly straining against the memory a few times a day. They were little things, but they were all hallmarks of Johnny actually welcoming contact, all the things he'd done any time he had let Edgar closer. 

 

So the problem was Edgar.

Or, more specifically, Edgar’s fear.

 

It was like he’d failed a test and he was angry that he had. Then he was angry that he felt like an angry failure. Fear was a normal response when faced with death, no matter how it manifested. It didn’t mean he’d failed a boyfriend test because this new information had worried him or that he’d decided to breathe for a while.

 

So maybe the problem was not simply Edgar’s fear, but that he didn’t know how to fight Johnny’s fear while his own was in the way.

 

Johnny alternated between showing obvious bitterness and badly concealed anxiety. Half of Edgar screamed to help him and other half just screamed because of him. He spoke to Johnny, but it was detached, empty, ignoring everything they’d learned, and lacking the joy they’d had even their first day knowing each other. They were the distant unfamiliar roommates they’d never been and it felt both safer and like being shredded apart.

 

“I made macaroni,” Johnny would say, and Edgar would inevitably jump, causing Johnny to wince.

 

And he'd feel bad but justified, so all Edgar could say was, “Okay.” He’d wander into the kitchen several minutes later, as though due to an unrelated need, and take some macaroni for himself. The next meal or the next day, they’d have the same conversation in reverse.

 

Johnny spent his nights awake in front of the television as far as Edgar knew.

 

He went for walks often, when he had nothing better to keep his mind occupied. It was painful to be near Johnny and the openness of the world made him feel better at first, but without Johnny’s keys, Tenna’s van and flexible visibility, Devi’s creative uses of the tools at their disposal, or Jimmy’s tenacity in the face of the chain link fence, the world felt shrunken, limited, and dull.

 

A week into this limbo, Edgar tried to call Jimmy, but no matter the time of day, Jimmy didn’t answer. The loss of his strong connection to Johnny still weighed on him, but knowing that now even Jimmy was gone made it feel real. Devi and Tenna were silent, and Jimmy…

 

He hoped Jimmy was still alive.

 

That day, he walked to Jimmy’s trailer, hoping not to have to confront death in front of his eyes instead of behind them. There were no lights on, but it was also mid-afternoon.

 

The main room was empty when Edgar peered in the windows. He’d never been in Jimmy’s trailer, but he’d had an idea of how it would look. Mostly, he was dead on – paper everywhere, things covered in stickers, empty bottles, and the finest furniture petty larceny could provide.

 

What he hadn’t expected were the books. Large books, some of them ones he recognized as textbooks from the school, filled the shelves along the wall and several were stacked next to the shelves in preparation for another shelf to be acquired. Edgar wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Jimmy reading, and rather expected books in Jimmy’s house to be serving the function that he saw being provided by a phone book – holding his table level.

Maybe Jimmy did all sorts of things the others didn’t know about. He’d surprised Edgar a few days ago. Maybe they were all hiding things like this. Maybe Edgar was hiding things from himself, even. And if Jimmy was hiding that he loved textbooks, Johnny was hiding that he was scared and vulnerable, and the only person he’d trusted with it was Edgar.

 

The other windows showed Edgar the other rooms in Jimmy’s trailer, none of which contained a body. But even the thought that there could have been one shifted Edgar’s perspective somewhat.

 

This Johnny hadn’t hurt him. This Johnny was just as scared as he was, and this Johnny could decide to vanish.  He could leave Edgar's house and his life and never be seen by anyone ever again, and the thought made the world seem even bleaker.  So even though he was still skittish, Edgar wanted to go home, find the Johnny he adored and not the one he was afraid of, and talk.

 

When he came home, Johnny was already talking.

 

As Edgar took the stairs, voices became clearer in Johnny's room.

 

“... talking about?”

 

“I'm just saying it looks bad. We could cut your losses now.”

 

Pepito.

 

“Whatever that means from someone like you, I'm not interested.”

 

“Someday, you'll wish you'd agreed.”

 

“We'll see.”

 

“You're stuck, you know. This whole thing you have going on is just a one-way distraction, just flailing on the way down. It all ends the same way no matter what.”

 

“You don't know that.”

 

Pepito laughed, and the sound seeped through the door like something thick and wet. “You don't think so? I know I've been awfully friendly with you, but have you forgotten who I am?”

 

“I haven't. But you show up and talk to me so often like you're _begging_ me not to do something as normal as have connections to other people, that I get the feeling you couldn't Satan your way out of a wet paper bag.”

 

“You're willing to chance a lot today. Are you also willing to take chances on your Edgar's pain later?”

 

“I told you before, I don’t care!”

 

That sounded like a good time to make himself known. Edgar knocked softly on the door as he eased it open. “Hello?”

 

“Oh, _there_ he is!” Pepito clapped his hands as though Edgar had done a trick.

 

Johnny yanked the door open and pulled Edgar inside by his wrist. It was the first physical contact they'd had in a week. “What are you _doing_?” Johnny hissed.

 

“I just had to make sure you were okay when I heard --”

 

“Now I don’t have to make two trips!” Pepito chirped. He was leaning into the window, his elbows on the windowsill. The rest of him floated outside and faded into smoke.

 

“What do you want? “ Edgar asked.

 

“Well, now that the key-necked wonder here has remembered murdering you and remains terribly stubborn, I thought this would be a great time to remind you about _Horrible Pain_.” He paused to pose with jazz hands.

 

“I said I don’t _care_!” Johnny yelled again.

 

Pepito placed a hand on his heart and batted his eyelashes in mock-shock. “You don’t _care_ if he gets hurt? Well.” He looked at Edgar. “I think this is your cue to leave, amigo.”

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Johnny spat. He took a step to one side, closer to Edgar, as though trying to put himself between them.

 

 _Still_ _?_

 

“So it gets worse, huh?” Edgar asked. “This wasn’t it?”

 

Johnny drew a sharp breath and looked slowly at Edgar.

 

“I would think so,” Pepito replied casually.

 

Johnny tore his gaze from Edgar, oddly hopeful as he spoke to Pepito. “You aren’t sure?”

 

“ _I_ would be upset by it,” Pepito said, hand back on his heart. “If I were you, I mean. It’s nothing to me personally either way. The end is the same.”

 

“I seem to remember Todd thinking otherwise,” Edgar noted.

 

Pepito frowned and folded his hands on the windowsill, his cutesy charming demeanor vanishing with the mention of Todd's name. “It’s not my job to tell you what to do. I’m doing you a favor. Take it – and your murder – as you will.”

 

He vanished in a puff of smoke and a gust of wind blew through the house. It whipped through so strongly, Edgar heard some dishes rattle downstairs.

 

When the wind settled, they stood in silence, staring at the window.

 

“This is… really fucked up,” Johnny finally said.

 

“Yeah.”

 

He didn’t know what to think, only that he was a little nervous and felt guilty about it. No matter how much he told himself that _his_ Johnny had never harmed him, no matter he believed it, he still knew how it felt to have memories of that face, that posture, that voice, very nearly that _person_ , actively murdering him.

 

It was still weird having memories of murder, period. Jimmy so was incredibly lucky.

 

Johnny sighed and picked at his gloves, doing his apparent best not to look at Edgar.

 

He'd had the radio on when Pepito arrived evidently, and the song playing faded in as they stood in the room.

 

 

 _“I do believe it's true_  
_That there are roads left in both of our shoes_  
_But if the silence takes you_  
_Then I hope it takes me too_

_So brown eyes I'll hold you near_  
_'Cause you're the only song I want to hear_  
_A melody softly soaring through my atmospher_ e”

 

Johnny stared at the radio like it had insulted him, even as it slid into a station ID tag. He looked back at Edgar, ready to jump into how fucked up it was that the radio reacted to them or Pepito or both and then stopped when he made eye contact.

 

And then Edgar smiled, despite the background radiation of fear, and he thought it was the first time he'd done it in over a week. This was still Johnny, after all. Still the person he thought was amazing, and still someone that the last version of him had wanted to save, whatever his motives. And still, most critically, someone who understood him, someone who made Edgar feel like himself. Someone else who was neck-deep in terror, someone who was scared and had been for far longer than Edgar. This didn’t negate Edgar’s own fear, nor did it make it _less_ , it just gave it company.

 

The blood and bone and metal pushed him to leave, but he stayed. Johnny was worth it. Fuck the reflections, and Pepito, and Devi and Tenna saying no, and Jimmy throwing a fit.

 

And fuck fear.

 

“ _good at being in the wrong place_ _”_

 

 

“He’s full of shit,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny looked at him, perhaps a little surprised he’d been spoken to, and tried to make light of it. “Yeah? That’s what you’re going with now?”

 

“It is.”

 

He stood beside Johnny and offered his hand. Johnny regarded it like a suspicious animal and then looked into Edgar’s face.

 

“Trust me?” Johnny asked.

 

“Yes. And I'm sorry. I didn't understand what I was saying when I told you it just wasn't you and that was all there was to it. It really _did_ make a difference when it was happening to me. I didn't quite get it until I experienced it.”

 

‘ _right place_

_any place’_

 

Johnny grinned and grabbed Edgar’s hand with overwhelming enthusiasm. He squeezed it tightly for several seconds before easing up, but not letting go.

 

“I missed you,” Johnny said softly. “And you _scared me._ ”

 

“ _I_ was scared. But I missed you too.”

 

Johnny nodded. “I know you were. I'm sorry. I was just – I was more scared of _you_ being scared and going away than I was of remembering murdering people. It freaked me the fuck out.”

 

The old familiar heat flashed through Edgar’s skin. “I had a little of both, but in the end I thought I’d rather be scared _with_ you than without you.”

 

Johnny blinked and a flash of panic crossed his face. “You’re still afraid of me?”

 

“No.” The greatest relief was that it wasn't a lie. The differences in this Johnny from the one in his head were becoming clearer by the second. The people he used be felt alarmed, concerned, but Edgar was just happy to have someone he adored back. “My reflections might be scared though. They're also, uh...  _deeply unsettling_ now _._ And I think they’ll be easier to cope with if I have you.”

 

Johnny truly laughed for the first time in a week or so. Edgar hadn’t felt until now how much he’d missed it.

 

“I’m having that same problem.” Johnny grinned and threw his arms around Edgar’s neck.

 

“It's good to have company,” Edgar said, his arms wrapped around Johnny ribs.

 

Johnny nodded against his shoulder. “Worst company ever, but yeah.  Do you want to show me?”

 

 

“ _Wish I could say I knew anything  
or that I used to be someone_ _”_

 

 

 

“It's not that I _want to_ exactly, I just think they’re not something you should see accidentally in the freezer aisle.”

 

“That bad?”

 

Edgar swallowed. “I’m, uh," he clicked his tongue,  "definitely a dead guy.”

 

Johnny nodded in solemn determination and tugged on Edgar’s arm. “Okay, let’s go.”

 

 

When they both stood in front of the mirror, Edgar took a deep breath and Johnny jumped just like he had when he saw them the first time. He twisted his fingers into the fabric of Edgar’s shirt. “Holy fuck.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Slowly, Johnny reached out and touched the glass, tracing the gashes and canyons across the oldest Edgar’s face. “I don’t remember it like this,” he said quietly. “For me it was a lot… squishier.”

 

Edgar winced. “I, um, had a similar impression.”

 

Johnny’s faces matched Edgar’s in a way. Both the oldest faces were spattered with blood, though the blood on Johnny’s was not his own.

 

‘ _but right now I don't know who I am_

_or if I've been him all along’_

 

Johnny took Edgar's hand and brought them both up so they could be seen in the mirror. The others did the same, just more terrifyingly toward the back. Johnny smiled – along with the rest of him – as he looked at their hands.

 

"You know," Edgar said, "blood aside, this is the difference." He shook their hands a little.  "This is what makes us not them."

 

Johnny laughed - Edgar swore he heard relief in it -and he looked about to say something and then stopped, narrowed his eyes at Edgar, and tilted his head.

 

“Edgar. Do you hear anything?”

 

Johnny had been asking that question for so long, Edgar almost responded automatically the same way he always had. But now, the answer was actually different.

 

“I do. I can hear it.”

 

Johnny’s eyes widened and he shook Edgar’s arm. “It's _you._ ”

 

 

“ _I think exploring the cosmos_

_is easier than talking to the neighbors”_

 

 

 

“I know, I know.”

 

“ _out among the stars_

_no one talks about the weather”_

 

 

The feeling was ridiculous. He was so happy to be hearing this song, so happy that it existed when he’d spent the last few days trying not to vomit because of his memories or his face in the mirror. The emotional whiplash made him a little giddy and he felt tears burning in the corners of his eyes.

 

So he laughed instead. He laughed because he could do nothing else, and the song surged to match. Then the little rush of joy that fluttered in his chest at hearing the song react translated back to another change in the song. It was like gaining control of a limb he didn't even know he was missing. He could communicate with this, he could understand with this. He could know himself better and feel like he belonged with his friends.

 

Johnny looked at him through the mirror. “It's good that you like it,” he said.

 

“I really do.” He smiled into the mirror. “I guess you can really tell now, huh?”

 

“Yeah.” It was short, with just a tiny bit of jealousy.

 

“I'm sorry... I still can’t hear yours,” Edgar said. It was risky. He’d been told not to mention things like this to Johnny early on, but after what they’d been through, he felt the risk worth it. ‘ _Fuck fear’, right?_

 

Johnny sighed. “Yeah. You and everyone else.”

 

“The others can’t hear it?”

 

“No. No one.”

 

“So you’re the only one who’s ever --”

 

“You’re not listening to me.  I said _no one.”_

 

Edgar had imagined that Johnny was maybe just internal song hard mode and Edgar would finally hear Johnny’s song when he’d done something dramatic like saving Johnny from a traffic accident or waking him from an enchanted sleep. That Johnny just _wouldn’t have one_ when he was so sensitive to them and so devoted to songs in general had never seemed a possibility.

 

“You sure we don’t know what makes them show up? What did I do just now that did it?” The song was still there, still swirling through him like he was breathing it. He'd become used to hearing the others', but having this constant presence in himself was completely new.

 

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe I’m being punished or I’m in some kind of abstract Hell, I don’t know.” He was trying to make it funny, but his usual joy was not in it. “Anyway, it's fine,” Johnny continued, waving it away. “It just means you're now an open book and I'm still a _mystery_!” He wiggled his fingers in a 'spooky magic' gesture and then stopped short when he saw his reflections do the same.

 

“Wow, look at this. We could make these guys do anything.”

 

“They... _are_ reflections, I mean, that's kind of what they do.”

 

“No, no, I mean, now that those last guys are so...” He gestured at the mirror and made an 'eeesh' face. “Now is the best time to cover ourselves in glitter or give them dumb hats or --” He clutched part of Edgar's sleeve in his fist. “We could make those disasters in the back kiss.”

 

“Oh, wow, that is _horrible_. Imagine if they'd actually done that. They'd have burned out retinas for miles.”

 

Johnny froze for a second and then his eyes grew wide and he rose up on his toes. Whatever joy Edgar was worried about him having lost was back again.

 

“Edgar. Edgar, Edgar _Edgar_!”

 

“Uh-oh.”

 

“No, no, nothing like that, just... you remember getting noticed, right?”

 

The song kicked up and looped around itself and he had a hard time telling the start from the middle and the words from the tune. It reacted to everything just as immediately and powerfully as his heart.

 

 

“ _looks like the neighbors think I'm scary too_

_and I have never had such fun_

_when the world you know is scared of you_

_you have nothing to run from”_

 

 

“Yes?”

 

“I need you to call Devi for me. I have an idea.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy POV, Batman. Jimmy's section was a big deal in the original SWAN and I really wanted to do it again here. Then I got to get Jimmy alone and do some Devi and Tenna, so it was a nice break from poor Edgar. Everyone but Tenna had some headspace time in this one and she'll have some in the future, I'm sure. 
> 
>  
> 
> The songs were
> 
> Pet Shop Boys/David Bowie - Hallo Spaceboy  
> Creature Feature - Buried Alive  
> Death Cab For Cutie - Soul Meets Body
> 
> Hallo Spaceboy is from original SWAN, and was used in much this same situation, so it should feel familiar. Buried Alive and Soul Meets Body are new and were chosen not without some fuss and agony, particularly Soul Meets Body, but with "you're the only song I want to hear" and Johnny and Edgar bonding again just before Edgar's song creeps out, I rather had to use it. 
> 
> And speaking of Edgar's song, it is new for this version because he'd become too much of another person to have the song he did in the original. The skeleton of the song is scraps of the original that I liked as a way to link him to the old story and a critical phrase from the original Edgar, and the rest is reSWAN Edgar. This is not all of it, and it's not even in the right order because it's new and looping and he hasn't felt it out totally yet, but we'll be seeing more of it soon!
> 
> There's a lot happening here that was not adequately explored the first time, and will continue through the rest of the story now. These kids are a little more resilient when it comes to casual horror than your average person, but it will strike them here and there. Also got to explore some dynamics I think are interesting and gave Edgar his song in an infinitely healthier way, so all is looking as good as it can with murder in the background. I'd wanted Edgar and Johnny to be together before the recollection of murder between them so that it was a thing they had to consciously choose to keep doing, even in the face of prior death. So glad that got to happen.


	18. The Greatest Show Unearthed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of kids in rejected outfits from the theater department's 80's Night, Halloween makeup, and glitter.

Edgar calling Devi did not go well – he kept getting a gag about ass meat when they picked up and then they’d hang up on him when he tried to talk about anything else – so he had to try leaving the call to Johnny.

 

“I really don't want to.”

 

“Do you want to go over there and ask instead? Those appear to be your options.”

 

Johnny looked grimly at his phone and dialed Devi's number. He received the same greeting, “Thanks for calling Jimmy’s House of Quality Ass Meats, we have thirty-one flavors. Pick up or delivery?”, but decided to play along.

 

“Delivery,” he said.

 

There was a pause.

 

“Flavor?”

 

“Smoky Barbecue.”

 

“That's gonna cost you.”

 

“Put it on my tab.”

 

“... what time do you need it?”

 

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

 

“...We'll consider fulfilling your order. Thanks for calling Jimmy's House of Quality Ass Meats. Have an ass-tastic day.”

 

Johnny hung up, looked at Edgar, and shrugged as he tossed his phone onto the couch cushion.

 

“Is that what they wanted? Weird role-play?” Edgar asked. “I thought they'd drop the act if it was us and not salespeople.”

 

“No, this is a thing they do. The Ass Meat requires _finesse_.”

 

Edgar frowned and his song may have too. “I suddenly feel like never eating ever again.”

 

_“Baby.”_

 

 

 

 

 

By some unspoken code of the Ass Meat, Johnny sent word to the others that they should meet up in Edgar's garage the next day. He hadn't spoken to any of them in a normal capacity since he'd told them about murder. Despite this, they came when he called.

 

Tenna immediately ran to Edgar and tackle-hugged him when she saw him. “I heard,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

 

Though Johnny wasn't averse to hugs, they still felt new and novel to Edgar and he thought for a moment he'd be content never letting go of Tenna.

 

“Thanks. I think it'll be okay.”

 

He looked over Tenna's shoulder at Devi, who nodded at him. He tried to do the same.

 

“You okay?” Devi asked.

 

“Yeah. Thanks.”

 

Devi’s song lacked its usual highs and lows today.  It remained spiky, but she’d restrained it.  You probably wouldn't die if you fell on it.

 

 

_“And she’s pretty sure it’s you_

_and you’re pretty sure it’s her_

_but no one will say a word_

_because it’s all a work in progress.”_

 

 

Tenna released her hold on Edgar and cautiously approached Johnny, who was sitting in an old lawn chair and playing with the bracelets and string he had wrapped around his wrists. Tenna inclined her head.

 

“Nny.”

 

“Ten.”

 

“You gonna make it?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Okay. We cool?”

 

Johnny smiled up at her, and some beads snapped against his skin. “You tell me.”

 

“I think we're cool,” she said.  She turned to her right. “Devi?”

 

Devi nodded at Johnny, but wouldn't approach him or speak.

 

“She'll come around, maybe,” Tenna said apologetically. “I think she's not going to feel like balance is restored until she gets to try to kill you a little.”

 

“Just a little?”

 

Tenna held her fingers up a few millimeters apart. “A little bit of killing, you'll barely feel it.”

 

Edgar took a seat at the bench attached to the old picnic table behind Johnny's chair. “I think I'm full up on killing, no matter how little it is.”

 

“Save some for the rest of us?” Tenna ventured.

 

Edgar winced and then smiled weakly at her. “Just a little too soon for that.”

 

She bit her lip. “Sorry. Worth a shot.”

 

There was a soft jingle of loose buckles and then the crunching of gravel before Jimmy stuck his head in.  For a few awkward moments, he stared at the group and the group stared back.  Then he waved cheerily and Edgar worried that something had really snapped since they'd last seen each other.  He stood just beyond the concrete floor of the garage, his guitar slung over his shoulder and two books tucked under one arm.

 

“Whatcha reading?” Tenna asked.

 

“Oh, um,...” Jimmy turned the covers toward her.

 

Devi snatched the books from him and inspected the cover of the first one. “Psychology, huh? You know we're probably _all_ abnormal, right?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “I figured. But I thought it would be interesting anyway.”

 

“Let us know when you find an explanation for Tenna,” Devi said, handing the book back.

 

“Hey!” Tenna protested. “I am _at least_ half normal!”

 

“Like I said: Let me know when you find an explanation.”

 

Jimmy grinned at Devi and, possibly due to some ice in Hell or a planetary alignment, Devi grinned back at him. He set his guitar aside and took a seat next to her on a faded loveseat that had once matched the pink recliner in Edgar's living room. Tenna shook her head and took a seat on the floor in front of them and all three of their songs swirled together a bit. It was a comfortable configuration of tunes and words, like it had been happening for a while.

 

He didn’t have to ask them to know Jimmy had spent the week with them, or that that was why Edgar couldn’t contact him. Now that Edgar had a song of his own, the interactions of other songs meant more, felt stronger, told him things. No wonder Johnny always seemed to ‘just know’ things about their friends. It was time with them, sure, but a large part must have been that he was extremely fluent in song.

 

Though how he did it without a song of his own…

 

Devi stopped teasing Tenna about being abnormal and let her wrist go limp to flop the other book into Jimmy's lap. “Is that fucking _German_?”

 

“Yeah, fuck you, I like it. I want to be able to understand it even when I'm not hearing a song.”

 

Tenna leaned her head back so it sat on the couch cushion between Jimmy's left knee and Devi's right. “You planning to talk to someone who speaks German, buddy?”

 

Jimmy flipped through the first few pages of the book. “Maybe someday.”

 

“Is there another one of those?” Edgar asked, nodding toward Jimmy.

 

Johnny glanced up at him, which was the first indication he'd heard anything since Tenna arrived.

 

Jimmy looked around as though he thought there could be someone else Edgar was talking to. “The German book?”

 

“Yeah. We could both do it. Then you have someone to talk to.”

 

He sat back in the loveseat as though trying to retreat through the upholstery. “I'll look.”

 

Jimmy’s song spiked and swirled and passed very briefly through Edgar’s, but it did not hurt or attack, it just reached. This could have been a good sign. Edgar chose to think it was for the time being.

 

Jimmy fidgeted in his seat for a few moments. “Soo... are we playing, or...?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “We could.”

 

Jimmy looked relieved that Johnny was even speaking. “That's not why we're here?”

 

“Oh, sort of. It's about this whole 'band' thing we're doing.”

 

“You keep just calling it ‘band’, god, I can't believe we don't have a name yet,” Jimmy grumbled. “It's like the best part of even being in a band.”

 

“You should give names to things that deserve them,” Johnny said. He was heavily distracted by his bracelet and twirled the stretchy elastic so there were little plastic stars looped partly around one his of fingers.

 

“Hey, we deserve a name!” Jimmy protested.

 

“Do we?”

 

“Fuck yeah.”

 

Johnny shook his head and pulled the bracelet from his hand. It was a small chain of plastic stars in orange, green, blue, and purple. The combination struck Edgar as a little odd, like it been a mistake in a factory putting out rainbow jewelry.

 

“We’re a bunch of teenagers with no training making shit up with songs that already exist. Would you listen to us?” Johnny looked at Jimmy as though asking the question answered itself.

 

“Yeah? We do cool shit when you consider that.”

 

“Perhaps your opinion is a bit biased,” Johnny said.

 

“Because you're _super_ objective,” Tenna teased.

 

Johnny rolled his eyes but said nothing to her. “I had an idea the other day. I think it's what we need.”

 

“What do you know about what we need?” It was the first thing Devi had said to him since she arrived.

 

“I know what _I_ need,” Johnny said, his fingertips briefly touching his chest. “And thanks to some fucked up quirk of fate, it's going to coincide with what you guys need pretty well now.”

 

Devi narrowed her eyes and leaned back into her seat. “Edgar, how much of whatever bullshit he's going to spew do you already know?”

 

He shook his head.  “He insisted I hear it with you guys. I know nothing except that we were looking in a mirror when he came up with it.”

 

Tenna wrapped her arms around her knees. “Uh, considering what I’ve seen of the shit you guys have going on with mirrors, this is not super encouraging.”

 

“It's like a bandaid or some shit,” Johnny said. “Just do it all at once.”

 

Jimmy gripped one of his books. “Why am I worried about this?”

 

Devi put a hand on his shoulder. “Because you are a functioning person. Congratulations.”

 

“Hear me out,” Johnny said. “Ten,” he twirled the bracelet in his fingers, focused entirely on it. “Remember when you were a dead girl for my birthday?”

 

Tenna blinked. “Yes?”

 

“Could you do that sort of thing on all of us?”

 

“...make you look like dead people?”

 

Johnny grinned at her.

 

She raised an eyebrow. “I ...could, yeah. I mean, Devi helped me last time, but…”

 

“Good, good.” He snapped the star bracelet back onto his wrist. “My plan is that we make it all unreal. Recreate everything I remember and make it ridiculous.”

 

“Umm...” Tenna bit her lip. “Does that mean what it sounds like?”

 

“Does it sound like making us all look undead and or crazy?”

 

Tenna winced and scrunched her eyes shut. “Fuck, Nny...”

 

Edgar braced himself on the bench. He’d had a feeling it would be something like this and deeply regretted not pushing for information beforehand.

 

Still red, clanging, snapping, then black. Only now, the memory of dying mixed with his song.

 

 

“ _but lately I've been saying 'fuck fear'_

_and I don't think I care”_

 

_Right._

 

Johnny continued explaining his idea, unaffected by the quiet reservations of the others and Edgar's attempt to regulate his own breathing. “We can get gashes for Edgar and Jimmy and just kind of cover everything in blood, but then we --”

 

He stopped when Jimmy sucked some air through his teeth. “Uh, wow.”

 

“Yes?” Johnny gave him a look that would have better suited one of his prior selves.

 

“That's fucked up,” Jimmy said quietly.

 

“I think it would help,” Johnny said, fondly spinning the bracelet on his finger. “We could sort of reclaim it.”

 

Jimmy tilted his head, fascinated, but Devi kept her eyes locked warily on Johnny, her muscles tense. “And what would you suggest we do with _me_ in this hypothetical musical dead people scenario?” she demanded.

 

Johnny shook his head. “We make you look like you have some screws loose instead of some flesh.”

 

Devi and Tenna's eyes went wide simultaneously, and Devi rose from her seat. She loomed over Johnny, and, by extension, Edgar. Jimmy tried and failed to grab her to pull back down.

 

“We did this music shit to _help you_ ,” she said. “Edgar said it was good for your faulty brains, you kept saying we had to do to get people to see us, so we all did it.”

 

“And it _is_ helping.” Johnny's voice was empty of any indication of his feelings.

 

“So you think you can just say shit like that? You think you can just do what you want with us? You think this is all trivial funny bullshit? Like the rest of us are only here to serve some purpose for you and your fucked up head? You think we didn’t just spend a week doing some _serious thinking_ about bailing on you, about never speaking to you again? You think I had _screws loose_ because I _kicked your ass?”_

 

“No, fuck you, I don't think that!” Johnny crunched the bracelet in his palm. “What other option would you suggest?!”

 

Devi held her arms out and looked to the ceiling. “Oh, I don't know, how about one that isn't dressing us up as your _victims_?”

 

“I told you, it's like compartmentalizing shit!”

 

“Jesus fuck, Nny! I thought we were cool!” Tenna cried. “We're people! Fuck, we're supposed to be your _friends_ , not weird props in the thing going on in your head!”

 

“I didn't—!” He turned abruptly to Edgar. “Did I fucking say that?”

 

“No, but--”

 

He snapped back to Devi. “See?”

 

“...but it could be heavily implied,” Edgar finished.

 

Jimmy remained silent in his seat, one hand over his mouth, the other wrapped around his books, deep in thought.

 

Johnny, not so much. “I spend all this time emphasizing that I'm _not_ the guy who did any of those things, and you guys think that I think _you're_ the people he attacked?”

 

Edgar sighed. “That's not really what she's talking about. It's a bit more you casually suggesting we dress up as the people the not-you guy murdered. This is owning it a little hard.”

 

“Tenna literally made herself into a zombie for my birthday.”

 

Tenna twisted her hands into her hair. “But I wasn't a _specific_ dead girl!”

 

Johnny shook his head, bewildered. “Why the fuck does _that_ matter? Besides, _you're_ not even dead! He didn't even know you!”

 

Devi took a step forward and raised her hand. “I kicked your ass once, and I promised to do it again,” she threatened.

 

Johnny stood up to meet her, and Edgar reached out to stop him, but neither of them were fast enough for Devi, who kicked the lawn chair out from under Johnny and slammed him back against the picnic table. The star bracelet slid across the table.

 

Edgar flailed trying to grab Devi and push her away and Tenna got to her feet in second. “Devi!”

 

Johnny fought to get up, even as he was a bit dazed, but Devi grabbed his shoulders and made sure his head cracked against the table.

 

Jimmy grabbed her from behind at the same time Edgar got hold of her wrists.

 

“Dev! Devi, stop!” Tenna pleaded. “Stop, stop, calm down!”

 

Devi ignored her as she struggled against the hold Jimmy had on her. “I don't have to do anything this little shit wants me to!”

 

“F-fuck you!” Johnny said, wiping blood from his nose. “It's a good idea, you're just not listening to me!”

 

“ME?! I’m not listening to _you?!_ ” Devi screeched. “Just you – Let go of me!”

 

Tenna helped pull Johnny back and away from Devi. “Devi, it's done! You drew the blood you wanted, let's just scream at him now like normal people!”

 

“We're _not normal_ , Tenna! You're gonna find us under every abnormal heading in Jimmy's fucking pyscho book!”

 

Devi’s song lashed out at everyone, the spikes she’d been restraining until now threatening everyone in the vicinity.

 

 

_“There was that time at the King Buffet_

_And the other in the drive thru,_

_When she said, ‘I can take him’_

_And you were pretty sure it wasn’t you."_

 

 

“This isn't going to fix it, Devi,” Jimmy said.

 

“You say this shit because you're all obsessed with him,” she snarled. “None of you pieces of shit are ever on my side about this stuff. We all do what Nny wants and that's fucking it.”

 

Tenna kept herself in front of Johnny. “We're on your side! We are! You just heard us all objecting! But you can't do this shit! We stopped Nny from doing the same shit to Jimmy! We can't murder each other, Dev, this is _it._ It is _just us._ Even if his head is broken.”

 

“It's fine,” Johnny said, sniffing against the flow of blood from his nose. “Just hit me until you feel better, I don't give a shit.”

 

“ _I_ give a shit,” Edgar countered.

 

“I can let Devi hit me if I want.”

 

“Can we stop?” Jimmy asked miserably.

 

Jimmy’s fear about whether the group would still speak to each other lingered in his voice, but it was just as present in his song, which shifted key and tone away from its usual hyper confidence.

 

The tone or the song apparently struck Johnny too, and he stopped trying to provoke Devi. He wiped a line of blood from his nose and dropped his hands. “I'm good, I'm done.”

 

Devi wrenched from Jimmy's weakened grip and spun around. She came very close to hitting him, and then just stared at him. He didn't say anything - he barely flinched he was so used to things coming at him – and he just blinked back at her. Their songs swirled together briefly.

 

 

 

“ _And the idiots surround her_

_And she tells them all to go to hell”_

“ _'cause I never been hot enough_

_but I aim to start.”_

 

 

 

Finally, the tension in Devi's body eased and she sighed.

 

“Okay, Jimmy. Okay.” She shook her head. “I'm satisfied with the blood for now.”

 

Johnny laughed a bit. “Just for now?”

 

“You're taking my spot to keep the choir room secure.”

 

He looked at her warily. “For how long?”

 

“Until I feel bad for you.”

 

He scoffed. “You'll wait for me to bleed out on the floor.”

 

She smiled. “Maybe.”

 

He held his hand out to her. “Okay.”

 

She shook his hand with smug satisfaction. “You're still an asshole.”

 

Johnny blinked at her. “You keep saying that shit like I'm not aware. I am pretty sure I told all of you this from the start and yet you come when I place orders at your fucked up deli.”

 

“Did you tell _Edgar_ that?” Tenna asked.

 

“He told me,” Edgar said, recovering Johnny's chair. “Two or three days after we met, in fact.”

 

“And then I gave him a fucking demonstration,” Johnny said, spreading his arms wide. “Me being an asshole is like 'Edgar wears glasses' and 'Tenna is partly visible'; it's not new or changeable information. It is a basic truth.”

 

Tenna tugged on Devi's arm to get her back to her seat. “Devi, come on, sit down. You were never going to kick the asshole out of him, even if you did hit him.”

 

“I could do it,” Jimmy said quietly.

 

Devi raised an eyebrow. “Do what now? You think _you_ could kick the asshole out of Nny?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “The dead people thing.”

 

Edgar heard the tiniest puff of a laugh from Johnny as he sat on the bench next to him instead of in the lawn chair.

 

“You know that isn't going to make a difference, right?” Devi leaned so close to Jimmy she could have spit up his nose with reasonable accuracy. “You do anything he wants, he's still going to frolic around with Edgar.”

 

Edgar waved at her. “Hello, we're right here!”

 

“You know what, Edgar? I don't care.”

 

Tenna sighed. “Guys, come on. Easy.”

 

Jimmy sat back down with his library books. “I know that. But I would still do it. I don't remember it, but maybe turning it into a performance will make it... better.”

 

Tenna tilted her head. _“Better?”_

 

“Yeah, like, help us separate it? Play through what happened as characters or something, like, have the stage personas be them or something. Then we control how we experience it, so it's … better.”

 

Johnny leaned back and let himself go dramatically limp against Edgar's arm. “Ugh, _thank you._ I can't believe _you're_ the only one who gets this.”

 

Jimmy beamed at him proudly.

 

Edgar looked down at Johnny. “You're committed to this, huh?”

 

“Kinda.”

 

“You honestly believe it’ll help?”

 

“Why would I have suggested it otherwise? You guys think I’m that fucking crazy that I’m aiming to add more?”

 

Edgar took a slow breath. “Can we _try_ this, and if it traumatizes someone, we stop?”

 

Johnny huffed and crossed his arms. “I guess.”

 

“Okay,” Edgar said. “Then I’ll do it.”

 

“Unbe-fucking-lievable,” Devi said. “It's a good thing I'm already promised blood.” She motioned to Edgar and Jimmy. “You're both going to do this because you're obsessed with him, and then Ten is going to do it because she doesn't have a care in the fucking world, and I'm going to be the bad guy for saying no and you'll drag me in anyway because ' _Waaaa, Devi, we're the only people in the world, you have to do this!'_ Right?”

 

“That was a really good impression of Nny,” Tenna said.

 

“It was not,” Johnny growled. “Take that back.”

 

“That's what's gonna happen, though,” Jimmy told Devi.

 

“You get to be the one that lived,” Johnny said, waving his blood-covered fingers at her. “The one that kicked my ass, even. We know it wasn't really you and me that this shit happened to, so let's do this and make them nothing but a dumb stage show. We are the reality and they're fictional. It’s not a judgment on you.”

 

“But I don’t have anything to deal with like you,” she said. “I’m not remembering it. I don’t have images I need to recontextualize. _You_ do. What you’re asking us to do is to create images we’re lucky not to be seeing in the first place.”

 

“What if you remember eventually?” Johnny asked. “Won’t it be better to have this first? Then you can fool yourself into thinking everything you see is just something _we_ did. Then it's a dream.  Then it's imagination.  Then you say it's just stuff your brain conjured from the pretend junk we did to look scary at people who can’t see us.”

 

“You think we can do that?”

 

“I think you have a better chance of doing it than me and Edgar.”

 

“So you want to do this to give me and Jimmy the advantage over our own heads.”

 

“I told you it was _help._ ”

 

“You’re a fucking disaster.”

 

There was a long pause in which Edgar was not sure if he'd have to prevent another brawl, but then he listened to Devi’s song, and he could read everything. Devi wasn’t as hostile as she sounded, and she’d have been interacting with Johnny’s song if he had one. The song either betrayed no intent to harm, or Edgar was not skilled enough to spot it yet. He had just finished running through nearly five different ways he could keep himself and Johnny from being hurt in case Devi snapped when she closed her eyes, let out a long breath, and held up her hands, settling her song in the process. “Fine. Fine. Fine, fine, fine, I'll fucking – I'll do it.”

 

Tenna patted her shoulder. “Good job.  Way to not murder people.”

 

“It's not for lack of wanting to,” Devi muttered.

 

“It’ll be okay,” Tenna told her. “If it fucks us up, we stop. Edgar said so.”

 

Edgar frowned. “Way to pin this all on me.”

 

“It was literally your suggestion, Mom. How else would you have me put it?”

 

“She’s right,” Devi said. She smiled at him, and just like before with Jimmy, her song took a brief swirl in Edgar’s direction.

 

“So that's it, then?” Jimmy actually looked a little excited. “We're just gonna look like dead people when someone finally sees us?”

 

Johnny adjusted his shoulders to sort of burrow comfortably with his back against Edgar. “Yeah. All we'll need is some kind of signal that we're real.”

 

Edgar narrowed his eyes, trying to follow. “What do you mean?”

 

“Well, say you're some normal visible asshole and you have a job and a family and a dog or whatever shit and suddenly a bunch of loud teenagers just appear right in front of you who look like they're dead.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

“You're going to think the dead are walking the Earth or you're being haunted or some shit.” Johnny gestured to Tenna. “I mean, fuck, people think they're being haunted even when she does it now, and she doesn’t usually look like a zombie.”

 

“I thought we _wanted_ scary,” Devi said.

 

“We do, but there should be something else too. Something that makes us _us_ , and maybe doesn't quite fit...” He picked the little star bracelet off the table and looped it around his knuckles. As it slid back onto his wrist, a large grin spread over his face.

 

“Uh-oh,” Tenna whispered.

 

Johnny held his wrist up in front of Edgar's face. “What color do you like? Not blue. Blue is mine.”

 

“Green, I guess.”

 

Johnny pulled the bracelet off and flung it at Devi. She caught it but looked exceptionally sour about it.

 

“Purple,” she said.

 

She hurled the bracelet back at Johnny and it nearly hit him in the face, but he caught it just near his cheek. He grinned at her and slid the bracelet back onto his wrist. “Then Jimmy gets the orange.”

 

“Um, and what about Tenna?” Tenna pointed emphatically to herself.

 

Johnny blinked at the bracelet. “I’m out of colors.”

 

“I’m giving myself a gold star for putting up with you,” she said.

 

Johnny laughed at her. “Please do.”

 

Charming as this was, Edgar still felt like he was missing something. “What are we going to do with these?”

 

“We'll get Tenna to put some stars on our faces, jazz them up. Dead people is one thing. Dead people with stars on their faces is weird and probably a costume as opposed to another undead uprising. So the first thing that happens to us when we're visible won't be that someone attempts a headshot.”

 

Tenna crossed her arms over her chest. “Wait, so you're gonna want me to make you look dead and then ruin it with crayon-colored stars?”

 

“You won't ruin it, it'll be great. We were worried about this past stuff bleeding in and us not being us anymore,” and here, Johnny turned to look up at Edgar, “but what better than stars to make you feel like yourself?”

 

Whether the others got the reference, Edgar didn't know, but despite how twisted this all was, he smiled.

 

Devi shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but with the right costuming, that might actually be a good look.”

 

“Are we using glitter?” Tenna asked. Her song shot up in volume, key, and tempo the moment she said ‘glitter.’

 

Johnny grinned at her. “I will be personally offended if you do not.”

 

“Welp!” she yelled dramatically, throwing her hands up, “There’s that! I don’t make the rules, kids. Glitter it is.”

 

“My sympathies,” Edgar told her. “I know what a struggle this will be for you.”

 

Johnny pursed his lips and snapped the bracelet on his wrist again. “Well, hey, speaking of things that will be a struggle…”

 

“Dammit, Nny, we were almost having fun,” Tenna grumbled.

 

“Like a bandaid, remember? All at once. You guys should probably see what inspired this.”

 

Jimmy leafed casually through one of his books. “Did the mirror get worse?”

 

Edgar sighed. “Yeah. A lot.”

 

“ _Spiegel_ …,” Jimmy murmured. “That’s not going to work.”

 

Devi leaned over Jimmy’s lap and peered into the book. “What are you –? No, no, stop that right now. You are not naming the band with a German dictionary.”

 

He pulled the book away protectively. “Fuck off, we might find something cool.”

 

“If we use German, I want to name us with a word that has like forty-six letters,” Tenna said.

 

Johnny let out an impatient sigh. “Can we worry about a name later?”

 

“Oh, do we deserve one now?” Jimmy asked as he fought Devi away from his book.

 

“We will,” Johnny told him. He grinned like he was performing, like he had every intent of teasing Jimmy and reeling him in.  Jimmy grinned back with a desperate delight that leaked its way into his song and approached overwhelming.

 

 

“ _When I was twelve_

_I sold my soul_

_to Lucifer_

_for a sack of coal_

_'cause I never been hot enough_

_but I aim to start._

 

_Never been hot enough_

_but I aim to start”_

 

 

 

Tenna bumped Jimmy's leg. “Hey. Dial it back, dude.”

 

Jimmy frowned at her. “I can be excited.”

 

“About _the band_ ,” Tenna stressed. “You gotta try to reel the rest of that complicated Nny shit in.”

 

Johnny glanced up at Edgar. “It's like I'm not even here.”

 

“You should probably stop teasing him, then.”

 

Johnny threw his arms up in a kind of dramatic shrug. “Who was teasing?”

 

“Nny.”

 

Johnny stuck his tongue out and got to his feet. He sniffed once and dabbed at his nose with the side of his hand, checking for fresh blood. “Okay, so, did you guys drive over here?”

 

Devi rolled her eyes. “Tenna wanted to, so yes.”

 

Johnny clapped his hands together. “Great, let's go.”

 

“Where are we going?” Edgar asked.

 

“To look at some faces.”

 

 

 

 

Johnny directed Tenna to the Burger Boss on the main road of town, and they all clustered into the women's bathroom where there was a long mirror above the sinks.

 

Other people looked strange in the mirror now, all just one face.

 

Devi hissed when she saw Edgar and Johnny's duplicates and tried to close her eyes against them. “Fuck, you guys.”

 

Johnny reached out and met hands with his reflections, bloodier than they had been the last time the others saw them. “Believe me now?”

 

Devi's eyes, however, were glued to Edgar's tattered face in the back rather than anything going on with Johnny. “I'm not seeing any other option...”

 

“Can I ask why seeing just his before didn't do it?” Edgar asked.

 

Tenna jumped back into Jimmy's arms. “Jesus, it talks right with you!”

 

Edgar exchanged looks of baffled irritation with Johnny. “It's a _reflection_.”

 

“Yeah, but it... god, that dude is _fucked. Up._ ”

 

Jimmy swallowed, still holding on to Tenna. “It's weird, he's just moving like nothing's wrong. Like, look at him! He should be screaming or something, not casually asking questions.”

 

Devi frowned. “I think that would make it worse. Imagine just brushing your teeth and this guy is silently wailing at you all the time.”

 

“Thanks for that image,” Edgar said.

 

“I am apparently not cut out for quality murder,” Tenna said as the tension loosened in her shoulders. “I was kinda thinking you just got stabbed like a normal dead guy.  Maybe shot or hit by a car.”

 

“I tore him apart,” Johnny said, hunched over the sink. He glared the mirror in front of him and then pointed at the bloodiest, scariest face looking back at him. “That guy did.”

 

Devi shifted her weight and her eyes glanced between real Edgar and flesh goop reflection Edgar. “So, you guys... saw _this_ and decided we should do band stuff with it?”

 

“You didn't answer me,” Edgar said.

 

She blinked at him. “What?”

 

“Why does this convince you, but just Johnny didn't?”

 

She looked at herself in the mirror and rubbed her arm. “I think it did, a little. I just... didn't want it to be real. It was easier to be angry, and you guys did so much lying that if I lied to myself…”

 

Johnny wound his necklace around one finger, and his other selves followed the motion, but the key was not on the necks of his extras in the mirror. “Ten, can you use these?”

 

Tenna startled like she'd been zapped. “Use – you want me to make you look like _this_?" She pointed to the mirror.  " _Specifically_ this?”

 

“I said I was reclaiming the stuff I remember.  Why do anything else?  Can you do it?”

 

She wrung her hands and shook her head as she looked at the gory faces staring back at her. “I don't think so.” When the others looked at her and not the bloody faces, she added, “Not like that, just... Well, okay, I really _don't_ think I'm that good. But I also kinda don't think it's practical.”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow. _“'Practical.'”_

 

“Mostly for Edgar, that's gonna be a lot of stuff on his face. And it's just... complicated. I don't think I could make it look good, even if Devi helped me. It’s a mess and I'd make it a worse mess.”

 

Jimmy stepped toward the mirror and traced the long line of gore that traveled through Edgar’s nose from his hairline to his jaw. Even though it wasn't Edgar's actual face, it was a weirdly intimate gesture. “What if you just use it as a guide?”

 

“For just less impressive wounds?” Tenna asked.

 

“Stitches,” Jimmy said. “Then they can be smaller gashes and not hanging bits all over the place. Then it’s like we’re reanimated.  Like someone brought us back and had to do some work.”

 

Edgar smiled and his gore face followed suit, which made Tenna groan in displeasure.

 

“I actually kind of like that,” Edgar said. “It’s like digging them up and doing some musical Frankenstein shit.”

 

Jimmy stepped away from the mirror to point his hands at Edgar like guns and flash him a toothy smile. The grin only grew when Edgar returned it, and Jimmy's song reached out again. This time, it didn’t just visit, it interacted.

 

“ _you and the guitar and I_

_make three”_

“ _when the world you know is scared of you_

_you have nothing to run from”_

 

 

 

Jimmy laughed, awfully proud of himself, and then his eyes widened and he softly gasped. “Hey, you have – That wasn’t just mine!”

 

Edgar had expected Tenna after Johnny, but he was still delighted that it was just _someone_. “You can hear it?”

 

“Yeah!”

 

Tenna popped her head around Jimmy's shoulder. “You've got a _song_ and you didn't _tell_ us?!”

 

“I just got it the other day!”

 

Even Devi looked excited. “And _Jimmy_ heard it first?”

 

“Well,” Edgar said sheepishly, “Nny, actually.”

 

She laughed. “Well, yeah, of course him. But still – _Jimmy_ after that?”

 

Jimmy shoved her. “Hey, come on. I told you we bonded over murder! You think I just make shit up?”

 

Tenna clapped excitedly and bounced up and down. “I can't wait to hear it, oh my god! It's been _forever_! I want to bond with Edgar over murder tooooo!”

 

Edgar laughed and his song looped through the others' just like theirs had done to his earlier. It was still swirling around itself so much that he didn’t know where it started, but he didn’t care what parts he heard.

 

“ _and I might never come back”_

 

Devi poked Jimmy's arm. “Come on, come on, what's it sound like?”

 

“I don't know, it sounds like Edgar.”

 

Edgar nearly had to hold his heart in his chest. “It does?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Yeah. What else would it sound like?”

 

Tenna bounced over to Edgar and hugged him. “Shit, I'm so glad! It's like you're for real now!”

 

There'd never been this much fuss over him before, and he was prepared to marinate in it for another twenty minutes or so and then he saw Johnny. Johnny sat on the counter, legs crossed, just watching.

 

Edgar bit his lip, and Johnny shrugged. The headphones around his neck shifted with his shoulders and they were suddenly a prosthetic and not one of his quirks.

 

Tenna continued to tug at Edgar's arm. “Come on, come on, let's go run a stop sign or something and then you can yell at me and I'll hear it.”

 

He tried to acknowledge Johnny and Tenna at the same time, but Tenna was being far more demanding. “Is that how it works?”

 

“I dunno, just seems like a good place to start. Unless I also have to lovingly stroke your mirror face. I could do that too.”

 

“Hey!” Jimmy looked deeply offended and then crossed his arms over his chest. “That is _not_ what I was doing.”

 

“Oh, yeah?” Tenna shoved Jimmy and he nearly toppled into Devi. “No one would blame you, dude. Edgar's adorable.” She put her hands on her hips and stared into Edgar's face with childish purpose. “I would lovingly stroke even your non-mirror face.”

 

Until that moment, he'd never felt and seen embarrassment at the same time on a real human, only cartoon characters who filled up like thermometers. Right then, however, standing in front of a mirror with clear view of his own face and Jimmy's, he saw the rush of red twice over, and probably felt warm enough for both of them. His song sunk and flared rapidly, and Jimmy's did the same. They didn't quite swirl together, but they alternated verses.

 

“ _consider floating in deep space_

_just in case_

_this place_

_discovers that I don't belong”_

 

“ _Hades is hot_

_and Hell is too_

_warm enough to melt_

_the rubber off your shoe”_

 

Underneath it all, Tenna's song zipped by happily; she was enjoying this.

 

“ _My finger's on her lips_ _  
__We were laughing_ _  
__Slip off that pretty thing, sweetheart_ _  
__We can play dress-up later.”_

 

 

 

“Knock it off, Ten,” Devi said, kicking at her ankles.

 

Tenna threw her arms up and turned her back toward Edgar. “Fine, fine. But I have it on good authority that everyone in the room agrees that he's adorable, so I don't see the big deal.”

 

Jimmy made eye-contact with Edgar and abruptly turned away.  In an effort to do the same, Edgar caught sight of Johnny staring into the mirror, lips moving to some song only he could hear.

 

Tenna sobered considerably when she saw him. “Whoa. Nny, are you good?”

 

He didn't answer her, so Edgar tried.

 

“Nny, hey.”

 

Devi walked over and sat on the counter next to him.  She watched him and his reflections silently for a few moments and listened to what he had in his headphones before she started singing along very softly.

 

“ _drip drain leak seep_

_here's more of it_

_I want to be you”_

 

He looked at her, and stopped mouthing the song, but Devi kept going.

 

“ _tether me to the next moment_

_don't you see_

_in between_

_I can't breathe_

_drown myself in you_

_don't you see_

_it's not me”_

 

Johnny turned back to gaze into his reflections, but, finally, he joined her.

 

 

“ _begging silence stillness listening_

_memories floating_

_fragments surface_

_don't recognize_

_could this be_

_half me?”_

 

Tenna and Jimmy stood in front of Edgar, shoulder to shoulder, with Jimmy nervously gripping his elbow.

 

Johnny touched the mirror with just the tip of his finger and sighed. “I always kind of thought that if I just waited long enough, the glass would disappear.”

 

Devi glanced at his reflections. “Something over there look more appealing to you?”

 

“Just that I – I wouldn't worry about what's coming, I'd just be doing it.”

 

“Okay, but 'it' is _murder.”_

 

He sighed and slid himself off the counter. “I know.” When his boots hit the floor, everything on him rattled – buckles, keys, bracelets, headphones. “Are you guys done staring at our cheery little mirror friends?”

 

Tenna gave him a somewhat nervous thumbs up.  “I'm good. I like Jimmy's stitch idea. I'm gonna use it on both of them.”

 

“Good. How do you feel about eating something?”

 

Tenna and the others all looked at Edgar's particularly mangled face. They stared just long enough to make Edgar uncomfortable and then Jimmy shrugged.

 

“Yeah, whatever, I could eat.”

 

Johnny grinned as Jimmy and Tenna strolled out while excitedly talking about how they'd swipe something from a customer in the restaurant. Devi gave Johnny a Look, and he returned it with a hand on his chest and a bow of his head.

 

“Okay,” she said. “Let's go then.”

 

Johnny started to follow her but Edgar stopped him. Before Edgar could get any words out, Johnny held up his hand.

 

“I'm fine,” he said.

 

“Sorry, I have to ask.”

 

“If you say so.” He smiled weakly. “I'm o – I'm _not worse_.”

 

“Okay."  Edgar wanted to reach for his hand or something else that television still had him programmed to think was the correct action.  "I'm sorry about the song thing, they were just so excited...”

 

Johnny shook his head. “It didn't matter, don't worry about it.  It's... it's nice that we can hear you now.”

 

Every impulse and every movie Edgar had ever known screamed that this would be a good kissing moment.

 

The second he had the feeling, however, the door behind him shot open, slammed against the wall, and Tenna burst back into the bathroom, her song racing, eyes wide.

 

_“You guys!”_

 

Edgar immediately jumped to the defensive. “I was just – ”

 

She didn't even hear him. “Nny!”

 

Johnny startled and nearly gripped Edgar's arm. “Yes?”

 

“Do you still have the money card from that crazy alien kid?”

 

He patted his hip over his pocket. “Yeah?”

 

She bit her lip first, trying to contain herself, and then a grin spread over her face and she jumped up on one foot. “Get your asses in the van, fuckers, we are using _the drive through_ _!”_

 

Johnny blinked twice and then burst into laughter. He grabbed Edgar's hand and tugged him toward the door after Tenna, who ran a victory lap unnoticed in the dining area.

 

“ _She's got technicolor shoes_ _  
__Untied, laces trailing”_

 

  
“Come on, you guys!” she yelled as she passed them and sprinted out the door to join Jimmy and Devi, who were laughing on the sidewalk.

 

Johnny tightened his hold on Edgar's hand. “I'm glad you're here for this.”

 

The heat rushed through Edgar's veins, made the hair on his arm stand up, and paired nicely with the way his song soared.

 

“ _people say happiness is all we have_

_and I think it keeps me here”_

 

Edgar laughed. “For the drive through?”

 

Johnny twisted his hand from Edgar's grip with a dramatic flourish and a lopsided grin. “Sure, that too.” He bumped his shoulder into Edgar's and nodded toward the door. “Come on, let's go get some shitty fries.”

 

“ _I knew it when I found it, but didn't know I was looking”_

 

 

 

 

 

Even with the van, they struggled to find supplies. In a small town, there were no art stores, theater companies, or any other places to steal face paint let alone latex injuries from. At least not in May. Even if they took from summer festivals in the park, they would still be down some significant wounds unless summer festivals had changed dramatically in tone since the prior year. Devi’s estimate was that it would be about September before anything Halloween-themed appeared in the stores that Tenna could use to turn her friends into the stuff in Johnny’s head. Their current supply of just paint had been stolen a few Halloweens ago, but it was not going to be enough to do everyone multiple times, especially Edgar, who had the most elaborate requirements even with Jimmy’s stitching solution.

 

Johnny and Edgar tried to extract the necessary supplies from Edgar's basement, but it failed to provide more than a single application's worth for everyone no matter how happy Johnny told the basement it would make him. Devi also pointed out that if they were going to drive literally anywhere, they could not keep coming back to Edgar's basement every time they ran out, no matter how much it dispensed. They'd have to get themselves a stock pile somehow.

 

The school had had a theater department once upon a time, and the trunks of props, costumes, and old makeup were stored in Johnny’s office in the choir room. It had been years since the school put on any kind of performance and the items that had not been sold or donated were stashed here years ago like some kind of arts graveyard.  According to memos Jimmy regularly stole from the principal’s office and teacher’s lounge, the budget had cut everything related to art and music except the marching band, and they were only allowed to remain because they supported the school’s sports teams.

 

When Johnny opened the trunks, a cloud of dust erupted from under the lid.

 

Jimmy flailed his hands and staggered backwards, coughing dramatically. “Fuck,” he choked, “I think I just inhaled skin flakes older than I am.”

 

Tenna waved her hand in front of her face, trying to clear the air. “Skin flakes?”

 

Jimmy put his hand over his mouth and nose so his voice came out muffled. “That’s mostly what dust is made of.”

 

Devi frowned. “You are making that up.”

 

“I swear! It was in the science book!”

 

Tenna held out her hands. “Okay, okay, stop, everybody stop, I need to tell you guys something. This has been bothering me for months.”

 

Johnny nudged the trunk with his toe and another puff of dust rose from the corner. “What’s up?”

 

“Okay, so you know the thing on TV where you scrape all the dead skin off your feet?”

 

Johnny’s face wrinkled in disapproval. “Nevermind, I already hate where this is going.”

 

“Just _listen_!” Tenna insisted. “So, like, I found one of those in the pharmacy once when I was grabbing some bandaids and shit and I used it, right? Not in the pharmacy, I mean, just in general. And you just end up with this weird skin _goop_ , and –“

 

Johnny ducked into his headphones and made a deliberate show of smashing them against his ears, frowning deeply.

 

Tenna shook her head. “Wimp.  Anyway, I kept looking at it, like, if you get enough of that stuff, could you roll it out flat and then dry it? And make human paper? Like tree pulp, just with foot skin.”

 

Edgar put his face in his hands. “Oh my god, I’m so glad someone else thought about this.”

 

Tenna jumped in the air fist first. “Oh my god, high five!”

 

Devi gaped as their hands slapped together. “ _You,_ Edgar?”

 

“What?”

 

“ _You_ think of shit like this?”

 

“Did I sign something when I showed up that said I was the totally normal one? Just consider that I wasn't the one who said and you live with the person who did.”

 

Tenna clasped her hands in front of her chest in a parody of an innocent girl and batted her lashes at Devi. Devi groaned but almost smiled.

 

Edgar waved his hand in front of Johnny’s face. “Hey, the gross is over.”

 

“I know, I heard it,” Johnny replied. “I’m trying to use this to burn the memory of it out of my head. If there is any mercy in the universe, I'll die first.”

 

Tenna rolled her eyes. “Whatever, loser. Let’s just see what this dusty garbage is.”

 

They sat on the floor in front of the trunk as they emptied it of clothes and dust. Inside, under the dust, they found princess dresses, garish suits, grey wigs, animal leotards, canes, veils, and one of every conceivable article of clothing covered in entirely in sequins.

 

Devi held every item at arm’s length. “I vote Jimmy wears this leopard thing.”

 

Tenna’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, damn, that thing is _tiny_.”

 

Jimmy leaned close to Devi, grinning. “Wow, Dev, I had no idea you were interested in seeing so much of me.”

 

“You’re both gross,” she said, tossing the leopard costume in Jimmy’s face. He laughed and threw it over his shoulder.

 

There was makeup in the trunk, but it was just as dusty as the clothing and was likely older than all of them. Even if it had been usable, Tenna didn’t trust it.  In the bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag, were some fake wounds, but none of the type or as dramatic and violent as they needed. Tenna tried to stick the floppy scratches and bullet holes to Edgar’s face anyway, but he was usually able to dodge her.

 

Johnny found a blue dress that sparkled in every direction, and was immediately transfixed, turning the fabric at multiple angles with a growing smile. Devi held her hand over it. “Do _not_. The cut of that thing is hideous.”

 

“Yeah, I have eyes, thanks. I’m not gonna wear it like this, I’m looking at the _fabric._ I want this. I want this as sleeves or something. I’m keeping it.”

 

Devi tilted her head. “Are we doing costume design?”

 

“Might as well, right? No makeup, but this garbage is still here.”

 

Devi smiled, and her song jumped up when she did. “I’ll get my sketchbook.”

 

As the others pulled items from the trunks and from the piles on the floor, Johnny and Devi modified their ideas for outfits.

 

At first, everyone had a costume in the color of their selected star, but it only took looking at the drawing of all four of them for Devi and Johnny both to reject it.

 

“We’d be like undead Care Bears,” Johnny said.

 

“Yeah, I was thinking purgatory for children’s television mascots.”

 

Then, they had to consider individual needs.

 

Johnny got excited about adding flair to everything. “Oh, we can do some ribbons on the wrists here to look like --”

 

“No, we actually have to play things.”

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

They also contended with Tenna’s makeup.

 

“Can we sew up a shirt for Edgar? Just cut a bunch of t-shirts up and then put them back together as one patchwork shirt?”

 

Tenna shook her head. “Do not make me cover both his arms with stitches. I will use the string to fucking hang myself.”

 

Johnny and Devi glanced at each other as Johnny slowly crossed out the patchwork t-shirt. “Long sleeves it is for Edgar, then…”

 

Edgar’s shoulders sagged. “Are you kidding? It’s going to be summer. I’m going to boil in long sleeves.”

 

“Do you want to fight me on this?” Tenna asked. She slid a chair between them and slammed her elbow down on the seat. “I will arm wrestle for those sleeves and I will win.”

 

She did, in fact, win, and Edgar complained about her crushing his fingers for the rest of the afternoon. “Please just make sure it’s light, then,” he grumbled as he rubbed his hand.

 

A large pale blue shirt with ruffles in the front emerged from the second trunk as Jimmy dug into its depths. It was light and almost gauzy and once Johnny hacked the ruffles out of it with his pocket knife – leaving a weird portion of the chest exposed that would have to be dealt with– Edgar accepted it as something he could live with once modified further.

 

Jimmy’s clothes all had to be easy to open and close in the front since his attack from Johnny had run the whole way up his torso, and the wound needed to visible for him to make sense with the others. Five minutes after the concept was pitched, Jimmy removed his shirt and replaced it with a purple sequined vest sporting a sheriff badge.

 

“There we go,” he said. “Done. It’s minimalist.”

 

“It’s _terrifying,”_ Devi said.

 

“So it’s perfect,” Jimmy replied, eyes closed with fake pride.

 

“You’d look like a murdered child molester,” Johnny told him.

 

“Jeez, fuck you,” Jimmy said, shrugging of the vest. “At least go to ‘clown’ first.”

 

Once the deviant clown look was ruled out, Jimmy's outfit was easy to nail down by just shredding a shirt much like his usual wardrobe down the center.

 

Devi’s look, however, was difficult because she hadn’t been actually been killed.

 

“So what happened with me, exactly?” Devi asked. “Maybe we can get an idea from that.”

 

Johnny bit his lip and twirled his pencil in his hands. “I don’t remember _exactly._ But I – he – definitely tried to kill you for good reasons.”

 

“ _Good reasons?”_

 

“I don’t mean objectively, I mean, in his mind it was logical. He was trying to keep things good.”

 

“With murder.”

 

“I’m not justifying it! I’m just telling you what he thought!”

 

“Okay, okay!” Devi yelled back. She took a deep breath when Johnny recoiled from her outburst. “So what was there? What was involved?”

 

“Knives. And then you kicked me in the face.”

 

She grinned, positively beaming at him. “Did I?”

 

“Yeah. I think I blacked out or something afterward. I remember trying to call you after, but you… were not happy with me.”

 

“No shit.”

 

“I think you also broke a mirror? With my face.”

 

She leaned closer to him and put her chin in her hand, grinning. “See, I would have been less mad if you'd told me this stuff up front.”

 

Johnny threw his hands up angrily. “Yeah, next time I'm fighting for control of my own brain, I'll keep your happiness in mind!”

 

She sat up and rocked away from him. “I'm sorry, chill! It was a joke!”

 

He sneered at her. “Ha.”

 

“I'm sorry, seriously. Why don't we use the broken mirror, though?”

 

“I don't know why we'd put that on you.”

 

“Exactly,” she said. “We put it on _you._ If we all have to be murdered or attacked, so do you. You should wear the damage I gave you.”

 

Johnny's gaze got a bit distant. “There was... worse damage than that.”

 

She brought her hands up as though ready to defend herself. “Oh, fuck, Nny, this is not what I meant to cause.”

 

He shook his head. “It's not you, it's just kind of always happening.”

 

Edgar leaned in and looked at Johnny's eyes, unfocused and unblinking. “Should we stop for a bit? Do you want to go somewhere else?”

 

Johnny swatted him away. “No, no, it's fine. I'm fine.” He turned to Devi with some obvious effort. “Left eye,” he said. “We should put it there.”

 

“O...kay.”

 

Jimmy slid a little closer, some pirate clothes piled in his lap. “What happened?”

 

Tenna slammed her fist into Jimmy's thigh. “Dude!”

 

Johnny swallowed. “That's where I got shot in the head when the phone rang.”

 

Devi's whole body clenched. “Oh my _god.”_

 

“That's how you died the first time?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny sighed and shook his head. “I don't know. You'd think it'd be easy to say yes, but I feel like I remember Jimmy _after_ that. I don't know, I don't _know,_ there's so much of it and some of it happens twice and it's all out of order and --” He put his face in his hands and rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. “I'm fine, let's just keep going.”

 

Devi relaxed a bit and asked cautiously, “When you suggested this, you said I could look like I have screws loose. Where did that come from?”

 

He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and then dragged his hands down his face. “I don't know. I just felt like those were the words to use.”

 

“We'll work on it,” Devi said. “We'll just do mine last.”

 

He nodded and looked distantly to the floor. “Sure.”

 

Despite Tenna's attempts to make it otherwise, the rest of their costume session was distinctly tense. Johnny asked to go home early, but blamed it on hunger rather than his head. Edgar didn't believe him, and no else did either, but they let him think otherwise.

 

On the way home, Johnny relayed details about Devi seemingly just as he recalled them and though they were all mundane – some even strangely pleasant – they came on so rapidly and upset his grasp of himself so much that he needed Edgar to stabilize him on the way home. Edgar very nearly carried him for the last block, and by the time they got home, Johnny was near delirious and spent a very long hour on the couch unsure of his outsides and his insides, with only Edgar offering consistent reassurance about where they were and what they were to get them through it.

 

Even though the others knew this kind of thing happened now, Edgar still said nothing about this incident to the others. Did they have to know about every time? How private should this sort of thing be?

 

They'd see enough of it in the future if this band thing worked.  Johnny couldn't hide in a van, or a hotel, or, in a worst case, while performing.  If Edgar could spare reporting about Johnny's difficulty with his own head every now and then, that couldn't be _too_ terrible.  He no longer felt pressure to lie, it was more like omission out of compassion. He hoped those were not the same thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Tenna went home with Devi carrying an armful of musty costumes that would soon be decorating her friends as undead versions of people they had been once before, and Jimmy accompanied them. He hadn't asked, but no one objected or even raised a question about it. He still had his trailer, but lately – and Tenna suspected they all felt this way – it had felt like Jimmy just belonged with them rather than alone in his trailer.

 

Devi and Jimmy alternated between discussing their costumes and their prior deaths so fluidly it was hard to believe that they'd ever had a problem with the concept. Jimmy was so comfortable there now it was odd to imagine that there was a time he didn't have pillowfort sleepovers with Tenna and Devi every night.

 

It was great that Jimmy was comfortable, and it was great that Devi was not groaning at the sight of him anymore, but now they were having conversations that did not need Tenna, and in fact did not even concern her. She'd heard Jimmy say so many times how much he wanted to remember just so Johnny would spend more time with him, even though he knew what he'd remember would be horrible, and at the time she thought he was just incredibly sad and needed some attention.

 

And now she was lying awake in a pillow fort with the sleeping pair of Devi and Jimmy wondering why she was even there. Johnny had already said he did not remember Tenna. She wouldn't be showing up in any of the big collective trauma memory if it ever happened. She wasn't working through deep personal issues of identity, she was just one girl, half-visible, zero past life.

 

“Dev?” she whispered. “Dev, you awake?”

 

“No,” Devi answered.

 

This lessened some of the tension immediately and Tenna giggled before getting back to the serious matter at hand. “Can I ask you about your memory thing?”

 

“I guess.”

 

“Just, do you remember anything?”

 

She heard Devi shift and turn over among the couch cushions. “I don't know,” she said. “I think what Nny wanted is already happening.  I don't know if I remember, or if I'm just filling in based on what he's saying.”

 

“Do you remember me at all?”

 

“You? Nny said he didn't know you. You're okay, you don't have to worry about this shit.”

 

“No, no, I'm not worried about that, I just...” She looked at Jimmy, who had his back to her and seemed to be asleep. “I just don't know why I'm here.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“Devi, Nny remembers the rest of you. It's like you all found each other because you all found him. What the fuck am I doing here? Why am I only half like you guys?”

 

“Ten, that's been _so_ useful. We probably would have been a lot hungrier most of our lives if we didn't have you.”

 

“That's great, but then what am I? Comic support? I just want to be part of it too.”

 

“You sound like Jimmy.”

 

“It's not like Jimmy,” Tenna groaned. “I don't want a built in source of angst, I just don't know why I'm here and I'm kinda freaked out about it. What if I'm a cosmic mistake or something?”

 

“By who?”

 

“I don't know. Who's in charge of this shit show? Someone had to be in charge to keep telling Nny and Edgar they got creepy true love wrong and had to do it again or whatever, right? God, Devi, what if we're just connected to them, what if we're just caught in the supernatural shrapnel?”

 

“Ten.”

 

“What if we're extras or something and once those two reach some sort of perfect bliss and properly reenact some cursed love story, we all just go away?”

 

“Ten! We're gonna be fine.” She put her hand on Tenna's shoulder. “I don't know why you're here. I don't know why any of us are here, even Edgar and Nny. And I don't remember enough to say if you were here before, but I'm happier about you being here than anyone else.”

 

Edgar once described his skin burning and his heart racing anytime Johnny touched him and, at the time, Tenna had told him she could steal him some medication for that. He never mentioned it to her again, but now she understood him entirely and felt a deep need to apologize for making fun of him.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. We're gonna be fine.”

 

Tenna nodded as she stared at the blanket ceiling only a few feet from her face. “Okay. Fine it is.”

 

 

 

Before he met Johnny and the others, Edgar had no particular relationship with summer. It was like every other season in most ways, just during the summer he just didn’t have the option of spending his time in the school. He often heard other kids his age desperate for summer, all wishing they had Edgar’s lack of obligation to school even if they didn't know he existed, but summer was not special for him like it was for them.

 

Now he knew Johnny and everything was special. Every season was a new experience, a new ridiculous thing they could get tangled up in. Most of the year, they had the school’s many fund-raising events and the cafeteria to raid, so they were always fed. As soon as there were no students, though, that food source vanished. Luckily, others came in to replace it. Summer meant the pool and its snack bar after hours and large company picnics in the park. It meant still using the school as much as they wanted for anything but food because Johnny had the key to everything. It meant spending the night on the roof or in Edgar's basement and savoring the limitless light feeling he imagined every other person his age had toward this time of 'no school.'

 

Except they spent this summer, from May until early September, not doing much savoring but instead impatiently waiting for Halloween to become marketable.

 

Not that they had nothing to do. In the mornings, they played songs until Johnny’s throat was raw – new songs, old songs, songs they borrowed, songs they were trying to make - and then they wouldn’t hear a word from him for a few hours while he recovered. In the evenings, Tenna had everyone in the school’s old home economics room helping her shred and stitch old theater costumes and thrift store finds into something they could be undead in. Once taught the basics, Edgar turned out to be a natural with the sewing machine and actually enjoyed using it. As soon as Tenna discovered this, she made Edgar hem nearly everything she touched.

 

Johnny dedicated so much of himself to trying to sing his way out of invisibility that he often had to be convinced to do anything else. He threw himself into these practice performances so deeply that Edgar wasn't even sure it was still him when he was singing. Even though Johnny had been the one saying they were teenagers with no training making shit up, he did everything with authority and assurance so much larger than he was. Everything looked legitimate and real if he was doing it, even if he did it in paint splattered rags from the thrift store.

 

When it looked like Johnny was getting too serious, Edgar or Jimmy would start to play something fun or ridiculous in an attempt to convince him to sing it. It didn't matter what he was charged with singing. He'd laugh when a song was suggested or started, say it didn't suit him or wasn't something he liked, roll his eyes at the cheesy choices the others made and say they were lucky he liked them, or sigh dramatically and give every indication that he was prepared to half-ass his way through the song. And then when he got his cue, the moment the first syllable left his throat, he took even his fun very seriously, and the others were sucked into the performance of it. He had a performance in him for everything, he could convince anyone that he and the song were the same thing and he embodied it no matter what it was.

 

There was something in his eyes that made anyone he looked at feel like an inadequate target, and something in his smile that made that okay. Johnny was just as enchanting as he was scary, and Edgar suspected he wasn't the only one who liked him that way.

 

When the others finished and Johnny stopped singing, he felt normal again and he'd joke or look tired or say that what they'd chosen was ridiculous, but when charged with delivering lyrics no matter the content, he was someone else.

 

Edgar practically had to drag Johnny away from trying to write songs in order to visit Jimmy's trailer to see the early season fireworks he and Devi had stolen. The display was brief but dramatic, if only in spurts. Johnny laughed against Edgar's shoulder when the fall out from the fireworks clunked onto the roof of Jimmy's trailer and cracked one of his windows. The night ended with Devi and Jimmy high-fiving in front of Jimmy's slightly-charred trailer and Tenna in silly tears over how great it had been that Jimmy and Devi were doing things together.  

  
Somewhere in the chaos of trying to have a camp fire in a funeral home parking lot, Jimmy nudged Edgar's arm.  He presented a copy of his German book wordlessly, and as much as Edgar wanted to respond dramatically with 'Danke', he couldn't think of the words to say even in his own language.  He settled for a smile and a nod, and Jimmy grinned not devilishly or fiercely, but  _sweetly_.  Edgar had even less of a response for this, but thankfully, Jimmy didn't seem to need one.  He went back to throwing things in their tiny fire without another word. 

 

On the way home, Johnny sang a song for Edgar without performing so hard he became someone else for the first time in months.

 

_"next time that the storm comes this way_  
_and I find myself braving the storm_  
_I will hear my heart beat_  
_over the thunder"_

 

He was still enchanting.

 

There was a several week stretch in July with humidity like the planet was taking a hot shower and Johnny had to be asked more than once to bring out his pool keys. He was reluctant to stop doing anything that wasn't related to their strange band project, often singing right over the person begging him to take them to the pool, but even he was willing to give up on their warped art in favor of cool water after the ten day point.

 

They rarely visited the pool during regular business hours. Not that they couldn't, but Johnny preferred it without the reminder of other people and no one had much of an argument that could stand against 'no children or old people'.

 

The day had been so hot they barely had the energy to really _play_ in the water. Johnny draped himself over an inner tube and mostly stared at the sky as he floated aimlessly and alone on the water. Devi and Tenna experimented with how many tubes they could stack on top of Jimmy and then with how well he'd float wrapped in all of them, but that was the extent of their typical games. The rest of the night, they bobbed through the water having relatively mild conversations.

 

Devi drifted by Edgar as he sat on the edge with his legs in the water. “Having fun up there?”

 

“I'm alright.”

 

“That's not what I asked, but okay.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“I just meant you look very serious.”

 

“I'm just thinking, that's all.”

 

She turned onto her back. “I think you're just sitting here being a creep and watching Nny like you don't see him everyday.”

 

“That's not what I'm doing, thanks.”

 

“What are you doing, then?”

 

He paused and _did_ look out across the pool at Johnny. The sky reflected on the surface of the water below him like he was just drifting through the darkening clouds. Thankfully, Edgar couldn't see of Johnny what he could see of himself.  He looked down, though instead of at Devi it was down just beyond his toes.

 

“Just looking,” he said. The tired man and the very dead one looked out of the water at him.

 

“Oh,” Devi said. She gazed out at Johnny. “Do you think he's avoiding it?”

 

“No. I think he's more bothered by the stuff in his head than the stuff in the mirror.”

 

“Do you think he's okay?”

 

Edgar smiled at her. “He always tells me he's never been okay, so I can't really ask that. But I think so.”

 

She looked back to Edgar, eyebrows high. “If you say so. You guys doing okay?”

 

“Are you asking me about the relationship you told me not have for all of last year?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He shrugged. “We're fine.”

 

“Is it magical?” she teased, waggling her fingers.

 

He glared at her, though it was stronger than he'd intended. “Is there something else you're trying to ask me?”

 

She held her hands up. “Fine, I'll go bother someone else.”

 

She pushed off from the wall of the pool and out toward Johnny, and Edgar just let her go.

 

Johnny moved so little when she bumped his tube he might as well have been dead. Edgar couldn't hear their conversation, but suspected Johnny wouldn't like whatever she was saying. It was good that Devi was so concerned about things, but Johnny didn't often appreciate the way the sentiment manifested.

 

Surprisingly, Johnny didn't swat her, kick her, or splash her, but he also hardly acknowledged her. She left him floating on a rippled version of the sky and was met mid-way across the pool by Jimmy, who was on his way to attempt his own conversation with Johnny. Edgar expected to see the splashing and kicking Devi did not get, but again Johnny surprised him.

 

Jimmy circled the tube, causing Johnny to slowly rotate as they talked.

 

“Hey, do you wanna come over with me and Devi?” He hadn't heard Tenna swim up.

 

“Um, okay.”

 

“I don't think Jimmy can steal him from you, don't worry.”

 

“I'm not worried.”

 

She laughed. “It's good to be secure, well done.”

 

“Are you guys asking _him_ about this relationship stuff too?”

 

“I don't know, I was just joking.” She tilted her head while she watched Jimmy stop the rotating tube. “Did Devi ask about it or something?”

 

“She asked how we were doing. I thought she went to go ask him the same thing.”

 

“Are you kidding? Shit, I'd never ask him about that.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“First off, I think he'd eat me alive. But he just... he used to be really confident that this kind of stuff was fake and that he'd never be involved in something like whatever you guys have going on. I would not risk being the one to call him out on that, the self-important speeches or the long-winded justification is just not fucking worth it.”

 

He dropped into the water next to her just as Jimmy made Johnny laugh. Johnny splashed water in Jimmy's face, but began singing to him, though Edgar couldn't figure out exactly what the song was. Jimmy's song responded appropriately gleefully and it became all Edgar could hear of either of them.

 

When Edgar and Tenna joined Devi, she was already preoccupied with Johnny and Jimmy. “Did you see all that?”

 

Tenna laughed. “I'm sure we'll hear all about it from Jimmy later.”

 

Edgar was not so lighthearted about it. “I wish Nny wouldn't tease him so much.”

 

Devi tilted her head. “Is this teasing? He's always done this.”

 

“I don't know, before Edgar it was only maybe, but now?" Tenna scrunched up her face.  "It kiiiinda really is.”

 

Devi sighed. “Is this something else we have to put a stop to because we like Jimmy now?”

 

Tenna clicked her tongue. “That _is_ how it works, I'm afraid.”

 

“Dammit.”

 

“I'll try to talk to him,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny was on the other side of the pool and Jimmy was still delighted about whatever was going on, so Edgar couldn't hear what was being said or sung, nor could he see faces very well, but he knew what it would all be like anyway. Every movement Johnny made, every syllable he sang would pull Jimmy in further, ensuring it would be that much longer before he gave up on his desperate crush. Even when he was supposed to be relaxing, Johnny turned so easily to whatever he had inside him that made him impossible to refuse when he was performing.  Even draped in an inner tube wearing a pair of faded shorts and a tank top, in a public pool, in dim light, he was incredible, irresistible.  Jimmy could probably have gotten over Johnny years ago if Johnny didn't seem to enjoy using his magnetic personality on people.

 

_Did he have this before? Is that why I stayed, even with all the blood?_

 

Edgar's feelings were genuine, he thought. He was certain nothing could have twisted him into feeling this way, but the longer he dwelt on it, the more his brain reminded him of the first time he'd spent alone with Johnny and he seriously considered that he'd been coached into adoring Johnny with nothing but a few carefully timed gestures and “I Love Belarus.”

 

Jimmy pushed Johnny over to the others several minutes later, though Johnny seemed reluctant to go along with it. The closer Jimmy got, the more his song reached out. It resonated in Edgar's ribs, took brief hold of his heart, made it blissfully hard to breathe, and then blew away like it had never happened.

 

Was that how Jimmy felt when he got attention from Johnny? God, he and Edgar really _were_ the same.

 

“Seems I've been sentenced to spend time with you people,” Johnny said as Jimmy shoved the tube at them.

 

“Was your siren song not good enough?” Devi said. She gently kicked the tube toward Tenna.

 

“Evidently not.”

 

“What was it?” Tenna asked.

 

Johnny closed his eyes and smiled contentedly.

 

“ _Whenever you tell me I'm pretty_

_that's when the hunger really hits me_

_your little heart goes pitter-patter_

_I want your liver on a platter”_

 

Devi tried not to laugh. “Jesus, you sang him the cannibal song?”

 

“And I've somehow been rejected,” Johnny said with mock-sadness. _“_ You should probably just stick me in a coal mine like a shitty canary now.”

 

“I thought it was awesome,” Jimmy said quietly.

 

Tenna grinned at Johnny, ignoring Jimmy. “You could sell your voice to the sea witch. Then you'd have to communicate with Edgar only in mime.” She bounced him over to Edgar.

 

“You hear that?” Johnny asked as he looked up at Edgar from the tube. “I am going to turn into seafoam – or worse, a mime – and die unless we get married in three days or something.”

 

“You could get out of it if you stabbed him in the heart,” Jimmy added casually as he poked Johnny's inner tube.

 

Johnny kicked water at him, but laughed. “That's probably a bad idea. I might regress or something and then where would you all be?”

 

“I think you're stuck marrying me, then,” Edgar said. “For the good of humanity.”

 

“I guess I'll cope. Serves me right for being so damn compassionate.”

 

Jimmy's song spiked again, but it was difficult to figure out exactly what it was doing, especially with Edgar's own song feeling as though it could burst from his chest at any moment. He knew it was all a joke, of course it was, even he wasn't serious about it, but it was still a powerful thing to joke about.

 

Johnny heard the song-based distress he was causing and laughed gleefully.

 

“I swear I didn't mean it to go this route,” Tenna said when Devi gave her a Look. “I thought we'd make seashell bra jokes, honest. I was ready to take bets on who would look the best in one.”

 

Edgar looked away from Johnny to smile at Tenna. “I told you I wasn't worried.”

 

Her eyes went wide and she clearly didn't know whether to gasp or laugh. Devi and Jimmy poked at her to get her to explain while Johnny shot Edgar a curious glance.

 

“I'll tell you later,” Edgar told him.

 

“I'll look forward to it. You look proud of yourself.”

 

“I might be.”

 

Johnny let Edgar intertwine their fingers while the others were distracted and Edgar almost didn't hear Tenna shriek that Edgar's song was adorable.

 

_“Excuse me_  
_I don't believe we've met before_  
_But it doesn't matter_

_lately I've been thinking 'fuck fear'  
_ _and I don't think I care”_

 

 

 

 

Johnny continued to be dedicated and intimidating when singing, and the ferocity with which he attacked the work bled into the others. Some of it was at Tenna's coaching, who said Johnny looked like a scary motherfucker she was oddly attracted to, but that the others were not bringing the same flavor to the overall look. Edgar had an immediate sinking feeling that he'd have the hardest time matching up to the 'attractively scary' benchmark, but even if Tenna hadn't said something, he'd have been trying to adjust. Something about Johnny's performance persona made all of them want to join in the same thing.

 

Edgar had no idea how to be scary, but the others all seemed to. Devi was scary _all_ the time, which Edgar and Jimmy both pointed out immediately when Tenna said she was doing well. They both also received a threat of a drumstick to the brain for their observations, which Johnny thought proved the point.  She threw the drumstick at Johnny.  Jimmy had a snarly smile and canines a little longer than they should be, so playing a guitar and grinning wickedly was perfect for him and he had no trouble being scary. If there were badass ways to play a keyboard, Edgar did not know them, but he tried to mimic looking delightedly arrogant, which seemed to work for Jimmy and Johnny.

 

Most of the time, Tenna asked him what he was laughing at or if there was something in his eyes. But, the first time Tenna thought they'd done it, she jumped and down and clapped frantically.

 

“Okay, so you just gotta make sure you always do that, and this is gonna be fucking great!”

 

“I don't even know what I did,” Edgar lamented.

 

“You just gotta think, 'I'm a dead dude and people love me,' and just focus on it,” Tenna said, pressing her index fingers to her temples on the word 'focus'.

 

“And that's what you think I was doing?”

 

“I can't figure out any other way you'd look scary.”

 

Edgar looked at the others for some sympathy. “I think I'm offended?”

 

Johnny shrugged.

 

“All that's important is that we looked like a cohesive thing for once,” Devi said. “We might actually persuade someone to see us doing this!” She actually sounded optimistic. It was rather cute on her.

 

“And that was just looking like regular assholes,” Tenna gushed. “Imagine how this is going to feel when we get you all dolled up!”

 

“Are we any closer to that?” Johnny's voice filled the garage thanks to their stolen mic from the school auditorium.

 

“Devi saw some black and orange candy at the 24-7 yesterday. The time will soon be upon us.”

 

“Good,” Johnny told her. “I'm tired of waiting.”

 

“We're kicking ass, though,” Jimmy said. “We sound better than we did even just a few months ago.”

 

Devi laughed. “Yeah, because we have Edgar faking random instruments along with being his own. He's filling in all the holes.”

 

“Not _all_ of them...,” Edgar admitted.

 

“Ideally, we'd have Dib clone him,” Johnny said, “but I think that would make my living situation dreadfully awkward.”

 

Tenna grinned mischievously. “We could give the extra one to Jimmy. He could take care of him.”

 

Everyone but Johnny yelled at her. Johnny and Tenna laughed like malevolent pixies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You're sure about this?”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny swallowed and nodded at his reflections, daring them to object. “Just match the fucker in the back.”

 

Tenna bit her lip, but then shrugged and pulled out some tiny tubes and jars. “Let's do this, then.”

 

The abandoned property on the main street of town had become a party store at the start of September. Johnny suspected Edgar's basement had begun outsourcing and this was its way of making him happy on the large scale he was demanding, but he kept it quiet, even from Edgar, who happily celebrated their luck with the others. Halloween happened to be a lucrative component of party stores, so Tenna had stocked up on some passably quality supplies to attempt to kill her friends with makeup. It wasn't great, and they knew they'd have to do better somehow, someday, but for now, it was enough.

 

Johnny watched her while she applied layers of powder and goop and though he couldn't pinpoint _when,_ he became the other guy as the layers built up. The faces in the mirror all began to look the same, and Johnny felt more in control of his own head than he had in years. He recognized himself in Tenna's handiwork and even though it scared him a little, it was thrilling.

 

“You okay?” Tenna asked.

 

“I'm fucking fantastic.”

 

“That's all we ask,” Tenna said. “Close your eye, I don't want to stab you.”

 

She painted the broken glass pattern around his eye while he sat in the dark. With every cool line of paint on his skin, he also felt the stings and slices of glass from two lifetimes ago.

 

“You okay?”

 

“I'm fine, are you done?”

 

“No, hang on.”

 

The baking mascots were there when he hit the mirror. The doughboys he'd been avoiding in all the stores, they were in his house, in his head. Their voices sounded as familiar as his own, as familiar as the rabbit head's, as familiar as Edgar's.

 

Edgar.

 

_It's fine, it's a game. I'm taking it back._

 

“Okay, open 'em.”

 

The pattern startled him, but it was impressive. “Heh.”

 

“It's funny?”

 

“Yeah. Not what you did, just... me.”

 

She held her tools close to her chest. “You're sure you're okay?”

 

It stung that she felt the need to be cautious. The others in his head thought it funny.  Best not to consider what it meant that he knew how the others felt... “I'm fine, keep going.”

 

Tenna hesitated to splatter the fake blood on his face, but silently went through with it.

 

She painted the last of the blood running from the corner of his mouth. It was hard to let her get close enough to do it. Something about it being his mouth made it stranger than her decorating his eyes. He knew she had no unsettling motives – she was doing exactly what he wanted her to do, in fact – but he aware of every cell in his body while she did it. When she finished the blood, she stepped away, surveying her work and giving Johnny a chance to look. “You still want the star?”

 

Johnny leaned toward the mirror and touched his face, making sure it was real, solid, _his._ It was, but barely.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “It's important.” _I'm going to need it._

 

The star was about forty percent paint, sixty percent glitter and one hundred percent bright electric blue when she finished it, and he touched it in silent awe that this whole crazy notion had actually happened. Some of the glitter came off on his fingertips and he laughed softly seeing the others in the mirror, usually soaked in blood and cherry syrup, now stuck with electric blue glitter and makeup.  If they thought Tenna being afraid of him was funny, Johnny would show them what _he_ thought was funny.

 

“I think we could all use more glitter in general,” Johnny told her as he turned his fingers under the light.

 

“Hey, normally,you know I’d agree with you, but this is not an infinite resource, even around Halloween.”

 

“We’ll find some, don’t worry. I just want some extra for this. When you're done with everyone else, I want to use whatever we have. I want to signal space.”

 

“Well, okay then. But it's on you if we can't get more.” She dusted her hands off on her jeans. “This is fucking nuts.  I guess you're done, so send in the next victim.”

 

Johnny grinned at her. “I think even the guys in the mirror are excited. Thanks.”

 

 

 

The others gasped when he rejoined them in the choir room.

 

He spun in a circle once, the tattered sleeves from the sparkly blue dress he'd found in the trunk trailing around him. “Yes?”

 

“Fuck my entire life,” Jimmy whispered as he brought his hands to his face.

 

Devi kicked his chair and hissed at him.

 

Jimmy's song whirled around Johnny, as always, though today it reached for him, ached for him, called to him with more desperation than it had had in months.

 

“ _you and the guitar and I_

_make three”_

 

It should have been a little repulsive, it should have been like any time Jimmy tried to touch him with too much need, but the song wasn't alone.

 

Devi shook her head, arms crossed over her chest, but she was smiling, and her song was inviting and fun instead of alienating and defensive.

 

And of course Edgar, who was so new to having songs, hearing them, being part of one that he looked overwhelmed by them existing just as much as his song was screaming that he was overwhelmed by Johnny.

 

Johnny laughed.  He was incapable of anything else.  It just came bubbling out of him and briefly drowned out the songs all aimed squarely at him.

 

“What's funny?” Devi asked.

 

“It's not,” Johnny said, though he could not stop grinning. “It's just _here._ ”

 

Tenna came into the room behind him. “Is someone else ready to do this?” She flinched when she got in the room properly. “Ooof, I guess I did good? You guys are fucking deafening, holy shit.”

 

“Sorry,” Edgar said. It was the first thing he'd said and the first breath he'd released since Johnny had entered the room.

 

Devi patted his arm. “Don't worry,” she said. “You can't really control it. Just get used to not being able to hide your feelings.” She rolled her eyes toward Jimmy.

 

Edgar looked from Jimmy, who was still hunched over in his chair having an attraction crisis, back up at Johnny, and though he absolutely hated that this was the case, Johnny had never wished to have a song more than in that second.

 

He'd heard Edgar's song take shape over the summer, had heard it loop around the others', had felt it pay special attention to him, had seen Edgar's excitement at finally fitting in with everyone else. It wasn't that he couldn't communicate in this way with him that bothered him – Tenna still teased Edgar for knowing Johnny well enough to fake being very specifically psychic – it was just that at that particular moment, with Edgar doing nothing in particular, he wondered how they'd sound together.

 

“Ten, I'll go next,” Edgar said, though he wasn't looking at her.

 

Tenna held the door open and bowed. “Step right up, Mister V.”

 

Edgar joined her at the door and passed Johnny so closely Johnny's sleeves swirled a bit.  He smiled at Johnny, though he was still ostensibly talking to Tenna. “It looks incredible, Ten. He's fucking stunning.”

 

“ _looks like the neighbors think i'm scary too_

_and I have never had such fun_

_when the world you know is scared of you_

_you have nothing to run from”_

 

Edgar's song hit Johnny so hard his breath caught in his throat and he thought the hearts of his other selves stopped as well as his own. All he could do was offer a smile and a slight incline of his head in return.

 

Tenna ignored that the message had only been meant for her on the surface and shoved Edgar's arm. “Aww, thanks! Let's see if we can do the same to you while I go blind trying to make all those fucking stitches.”

 

Johnny exhaled when they left the room. He knew Devi was going to speak before she did.

 

“Wow,” she said.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“ _And she’s pretty sure it’s you_

_and you’re pretty sure it’s her_

_but no one will say a word”_

 

 

She stood next to him. “That's all.”

 

“That's what I thought.”

 

He spent nearly an hour keeping Jimmy entertained but not too _invested_ , which was harder than it had ever been. Even a glance sparked a reaction in his posture, his eyes, and especially the song. The others had told Johnny to stop teasing Jimmy in their own ways, but when even a turn of Johnny's head made Jimmy's heart provide a new beat to his song, what was Johnny supposed to do? Stop speaking to him?

 

There were only a few hours until the lunch rush in the cafeteria. Despite the glitter and the stars, he swore the faces in his head were excited. It didn't make sense. They should have been angry at being turned into a show. Was it leftover from practicing with them? They were there when he sang, they were _part of him_ when he did this.

 

A little over an hour and a half later, the door opened.

 

“Hey.”

 

Johnny looked up to see Edgar in the doorway.

 

“Oh, wow.”

 

Edgar twisted his fingers together in front of him.  His face was crossed several times with stitching, some real three dimensional string, and some drawn on. Tenna had circled Edgar's eyes in red that became so dark it turned black. He was splattered with what looked like thick drying blood, and a green star glittered from his cheek.

 

He was perfect.

 

_Perfect?_

 

“I told her to follow the mirror," Edgar said.

 

“I can tell.” Johnny reached up and traced the gash that ran diagonally over Edgar's face. “It's really good.”

 

“You're still sure about this?”

 

“Yeah, aren't you?” Johnny looked into Edgar's face for any of the assured confidence he felt himself, but there seemed to be nothing. “Don't you feel different?”

 

“I do, actually. It's a little weird.”

 

“You'll get used to it. And then I think you'll like it.”

 

Edgar tried to smile, but was not entirely successful. “I trust you.”

 

Whatever this all was, this tightening in his chest and this kind of fluttering in his stomach, Johnny only slightly resented it happening.  

 

"By the way," Edgar said, lowering his voice as Jimmy's song began to boil behind them.  "I had an idea for what to call this while I was talking to Tenna."

 

"Yeah?"

 

He leaned close, far closer than he generally dared in front of the others, and whispered the perfect name for this entire ridiculous venture near Johnny's cheek.  

 

"That's fucking _perfect."_  Johnny got a little closer under the guise of looking closer at the stitching on Edgar's jaw. Even though the others were still likely to hear it, even though Devi had very nearly called him out all all this bullshit that didn't need to be called out, he still whispered, “You look incredible.”

 

Edgar grinned successfully this time.

 

 

Jimmy and Devi emerged from Tenna's impromptu bathroom studio just as tattered and glittery as Johnny and Edgar had. Jimmy was as keen to show Johnny his sliced torso as Johnny was not to touch it. Devi had been almost totally whited out, with only a single long black line shooting straight down from each eye to her jaw and her purple star to break it up. The blood on Devi was on her hands rather then her face. She and Johnny had decided on the design together, though they couldn't explain to the others why, only that it had _felt_ right.

 

Finally, standing together in the choir room, covered in makeup, string, and glitter, they had less than hour before their planned dramatic debut to a pack of highschoolers.

 

 

 

 

“I wish to state for the record that I feel like an idiot,” Devi said.

 

“You helped me design it, it's partly your fault.”

 

“You know how some things are better in your head?”

 

“That's not this.”

 

“At the moment, I disagree.”

 

“Noted.”

 

Devi was perhaps justified. Edgar and the others stood in the area Tenna had roped off for them in the cafeteria, decked out in fake wounds and 80's night theater department leftovers and this was going to their first real attempt to break into the rest of the world.

 

“Do you think it'll feel different to be seen by other people?” Jimmy asked, fiddling with strings on his guitar. “What if it hurts or something?”

 

“Um, it definitely doesn't,” Tenna said.

 

Johnny looked around the room at the students and teachers disapprovingly. “I keep thinking about actually attempting to talk to these people, and then I reconsider my motivations a little.”

 

Devi laughed. “All this effort for 'Now I can talk to them, I just choose not to?'”

 

Johnny beamed at her. “Precisely! I want to _choose_ to be an elitist anti-social asshole.”

 

Edgar didn't even look up from his keys. His heart was pounding and he was happy for the chance to make jokes. “You're doing just fine already.”

 

“My god,” Tenna said, putting a hand on her chest. “That is some true love right there. Be still my heart.”

 

Johnny rolled his eyes. “I'm the luckiest elitist anti-social asshole alive.”

 

Devi sighed. “Okay, are we done with you two and your indirect flirting? I want to get this over with.”

 

“I'm ready when you guys are,” Johnny said. He took a deep breath and stood in the center of the others. He was a strange figure there, all confidence and nerves at the same time, dark circles around his eyes, fake blood soaked up beyond his wrist and glitter that made the violence on his skin sparkle.

 

Not that it was only Johnny. Tenna had been quite generous with the glitter at the end. Edgar suspected it would be with him for the rest of his life, and then considered for a few seconds how long he thought that would really be.

 

_How old did the other two get to be?_

 

“I'll go grab the lights,” Tenna said. “After that, it's all on you guys. Good luck!”

 

Tenna flashed them two thumbs up and a grin and then scuttled across the cafeteria and switched off every set of lights in the room but the one directly over her friends.  The noise in the room immediately surged as students and teachers alike reacted to the sudden dark.

 

They hadn't written a song for this, though they had some 'for later'. Johnny had thought a song that existed already, that people already had a chance of knowing and recognizing and having feelings for, would be the best bet to get them to poke holes in whatever separated them from the rest of the world.  Devi counted down and they began to play the intro to a song Jimmy had suggested for the occasion. Shockingly, Johnny had agreed to it, even though it was likely no one in the cafeteria knew the song, thus defeating his original goal. The image it projected and the symbolism of making their first attempt with this song appealed to everyone, so they committed to trying it before anything else.

 

Johnny didn't do the entire opening monologue, which started the others into thinking he was backing out of the whole thing, but he slowly worked his way up to the proper energy for the end of the monologue before it became proper lyrics.

 

 

“ _...but I'm warning you, there's always a price._

_Welcome to the Greatest Show Unearthed!”_

 

 

Would people hear them? See them? How would they even know?

 

Edgar put his all into the performance regardless. He could only hope they sounded as good as he felt, and that Johnny's idea that a small group concentrating hard on one creative output would be enough.  If this didn't work, he suspected they would all quietly pretend this summer had never happened. 

 

 

_“The dark carnival is in town_   
_You better be ready_   
_Just follow the parade_   
_Of dancing skeletons...”_

 

 

With every mark they hit, every cue Johnny took or gave that went off perfectly, Edgar's heart pounded faster. Whether others saw him didn't matter so much now. The idea of making something that was powerful enough to make people notice now burned in his chest with so much hope and sincerity it was like the idea had been his.

 

Just as he'd been all summer, Johnny was someone else while he sang. Dressed in the costume he and Devi had designed, that Tenna and Edgar had sewn, with stitching running up the side thanks to Jimmy's idea, all his dramatic gestures streamed with fluttering tattered glitter. He moved in all the shredded fabric like he'd been born speaking a language of ripped ribbons.

 

_“Welcome to the lower birth_  
_The greatest show unearthed!_  
_We appear without a sound_  
_The darkest show around”_

 

Johnny was not the only one projecting his all. Edgar's hands floated over the keys with a fluency he'd previously only considered he had in spoken words and from them erupted a carnival. More than once, Devi sounded as though she'd tear right through her drums just as much as every strike felt like a heartbeat. Jimmy's guitar shrieked like he was bleeding the sound from his wrists, not that it was something he was manipulating.

 

“ _We will leave you in a daze_ _  
__Madness, murder, dismay_ _  
__We will disappear at night_ _  
__With blood on the concrete”_

 

Of all the ridiculous things they were doing in an effort to be seen, the one Edgar had felt the weirdest about until the moment it really mattered was joining the others in filling in backup vocals. They didn't need to sound good, they just needed to be there, and until he sat in front of a room full of people who might be learning how to see him covered in fake gore and stitches, listening to Johnny project some kind of sorcery, he'd felt ridiculous. Now, he was just as excited to be 'la-la-la'-ing in the background as he was to be pouring himself across the keys.

 

As far as Edgar knew, there was not an audience, there was just Johnny. _God,_ Johnny.

 

_“I will be your ticket taker_  
_Come inside it’s a dream_  
_Enter the funhouse of mirrors_  
_No one can hear you scream_  
_We can supply anything_  
_That your heart desires_  
_But the consequences_  
_Will surely be dire”_

 

Edgar knew him. Knew him so well he knew things from at least one other whole life ago. Knew who he was and what he ate and how he slept and how his bones just through a tshirt and his favorite _everything_ and yet even he believed the act. Anything Johnny sang was true, it was real, it was hypnotic, and there needed to be more of it. Whoever was singing, Edgar needed to know everything about him, wanted to give him everything he asked for.

 

_“Welcome to the lower birth_  
_The greatest show unearthed_  
_We appear without a sound_  
_The darkest show around_

_We will leave you in a daze_  
_Madness, murder, dismay_  
_We will disappear at night_  
_With blood on the concrete”_

 

Tenna had been right about the effect being stronger once they were costumed and made up.

 

_“Come inside_  
_For the ride_  
_Your deepest darkest fears”_

 

Johnny turned the song on his bandmates briefly. He turned and sang to Edgar, who barely had control of himself enough to sing with him like he was supposed to.

 

  
_“The best night_  
_Of your life_  
_You’re never leaving here”_

Johnny grinned fiendishly at him as he spun away to sing at Jimmy and Devi. The makeup and the costume was one thing, but the magnetic lung-collapsing power of the thing was somewhere in Johnny's veins and the outside trappings just helped other people see it. It was a wonder Edgar survived getting so close.

  
  
_“The unknown_  
_The unseen_  
_Is what you’re gonna find_  
  
_Witness this_  
_Witness that_  
_Until you lose your mind_

_Welcome to the lower birth_  
_The greatest show unearthed_  
_We appear without a sound_  
_The darkest show around_  
_We will leave you in a daze_  
_Madness, murder, dismay_  
_We will disappear at night_  
_With blood on the concrete_

_la, lalala, la la la...”_

 

 

It wasn't until the last notes of the song drifted away that Edgar really saw the people in the cafeteria for the first time. It wasn't everyone, not by a long shot, but there was a small cluster of slack-jawed students just outside the police line enclosure they'd erected to perform in.

 

Edgar held his breath, even as his lungs screamed for him to do the opposite.

 

“Hi,” Johnny said. His voice echoed briefly before the small group in front of them erupted in awed cheering and clapping and then the lights flickered back on.

 

“I _told_ you!” Tenna screamed while being herded toward the door by several alarmed teachers. She clawed at the wall to get away from them and Devi jumped up from her drums to chase after her.

 

“It's okay!” Tenna called to her. “I got this! Do your thing!”

 

She vanished through the door as a girl a few years younger than them approached the police tape and waved at Johnny.

 

“Hi,” she said.

 

“Holy shit,” Jimmy whispered. Devi slowly sank back down behind her drums with her hand over her mouth.

 

“How did you guys do that?” The girl asked. She looked at the others with wonder but they couldn't stop looking at each other long enough to respond to her.

 

Johnny laughed as the little crowd started to be pushed to their seats. “The way I wanted,” he said.

 

“What?”

 

“You wouldn't understand,” Edgar told her.

 

“Who are you guys? I've never seen you here before.”

 

Johnny laughed and looked at the others. “Imagine that!” He grinned at the girl and bowed, one hand over the key on his neck, the other extended to his side like some grand ballet gesture.  “My name is Johnny. That's Jimmy, Devi, and Edgar.”

 

He grinned at them, his shoulders rising and falling, suddenly betraying that even his stage persona was a little out of breath. The others returned his smile and Edgar gave him a nod. _Go on._

 

The girl took a step back when Johnny looked back at her.

 

“We're the Homicides.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, Homicides. :)
> 
> This moment is what this entire story spawned from 12 years ago. A friend brought me an 80's Night flyer featuring Jem and the Holograms while I was drawing Johnny in my astronomy class. We thought it would fun to combine them. I named the band he apparently fronted "The Homicides" as a call to "The Holograms". A highschool story swirled its way around that, the nostalgia inherent in something like an 80's night injected some influence, and SWAN happened with the spark of a friend threatening to post it for me if I didn't do it myself. 
> 
> It's been hard not to call them "The Homicides" in these notes until this point! 
> 
> Of course the Ass Meat thing is a call back to I Feel Sick, though I appreciate now that she called it Jimmy's even more since Jimmy is sort of crashing at Devi's place at this point. I did want to get Devi actually getting some blood out of Nny in the story at some point as wel, just to mirror a previous encounter of theirs, in however minor a way, so now that's taken care of. There's also a reference to the single page comic about Nny and mirrors as well. I was feeling reference-y for this one, apparently!
> 
>  
> 
> The first song that is not one of the group's personal songs is "Normal and Happy", from the performance art piece by 'teeth' that I saw in Portland in 2007. It was used in the original SWAN 18, amazingly. 
> 
> The next song we encounter is a tiny snippet of "Thunderstorm" by Explode 16, which was originally in SWAN 13. 
> 
> After that is a verse of Kesha's "Cannibal," a personal favorite I wanted to get in here somehow. 
> 
> And, of course, because it wouldn't be the Homicides debut without it, Creature Feature's "Greatest Show Unearthed" is the song they chose to scream into the void, originally seen in SWAN 15. 
> 
> Speaking of the group's personal songs, I'm really enjoying weaving them all together like I've been doing. This wasn't something that happened in the original, or at least it wasn't talked about, so it's really fun to do it now. I wanted to give a better idea of what it meant to just have this other kind of part of you that people could interact with just around all the time. Since Edgar's new at it, we get to check it out with him.


	19. and there is discord in the garden tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freedom in the form of a van, a department store, and not being lobsters.

The morning after their first 'show', the school's morning announcements 'wished to remind everyone' that there were to be no unauthorized student events on school grounds.

 

Encouraged, they played again during a gym class, and while the teacher never noticed them, half the kids playing outfield did.

 

The next week, Jimmy found a memo in the teacher's lounge about a 'magic trick fad' that might be sweeping the school.

 

They played during a band rehearsal, and even though the teacher saw them, she was so overworked or cared so little that she just told them to please stick to the music they were playing for the football game in two weeks. She was utterly unaware they weren't her students.

 

Johnny took performing very seriously, no matter who it was for. His usual theatrics served him well in the role of an intriguing but terrifying musical murderer. He was able to to enchant people who hadn't even seen him standing there a minute ago into absolutely adoring him. The first time Johnny grinned for someone else the same way he did for the group's frequent song and dance parties, Edgar's heart nearly flipped from his chest. He was further horrified to find that he had to restrain himself from stepping in when Johnny used it on an awkward-looking kid at the track meet.

 

No wonder Jimmy had been so aggressively taken with Johnny before they'd even officially met. Edgar had had Johnny's attention almost entirely since the day they met and yet to see otherwise made his stomach twist, even though that was ridiculous and it was just for the sake of getting people to pay attention to the group.

 

Edgar brought it up after they'd charmed some kids a few years younger in the park.

 

“I didn't know your plan was do to murder but with a seduce-y slink.”

 

Johnny blinked and just stared at him for several seconds before breaking into laughter. “Jeez, you know it's an act, right? That's the point.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, it just...” He held his hands up, palms down, approximating levels. “I just don't think 'murder' and then line that right up with 'come hither, oh, eighth grader.”

 

Johnny snickered and grinned widely. “You know you're safe, right?”

 

“Safe?”

 

“Yeah, I'm not shopping around for anyone else to spend the night on the roof with or anything. You're safe from losing me to random fourteen-year-olds.”

 

“Good, I'd honestly be heartbroken.” He said it like a joke, but how much he meant it was _painful._

 

“I'll keep that in mind.” And Johnny _winked_ at him, turning Edgar's insides into some unappealing flavor of Jell-O.

 

Johnny had a considerable emotional hold on Edgar, and even if tiny parts of him from other lives strongly suggested it was a poor idea, he found himself relishing it.

 

 

 

 

It was a consequence they expected, but it was still difficult when they lost the school, at least during daylight hours. They'd become visible to at least two teachers who would cause trouble for them if they were visibly occupying the choir room or the bleachers. They'd barely escaped the cafeteria with all their equipment intact with just students seeing them for their first 'show' and Tenna had narrowly missed an interrogation for the sake of the others for her role in flicking light switches.

 

There were small things they hadn't expected. Devi gained a rather dedicated admirer on the track team who would ask her for her schedule every time he caught a glimpse of her. Even her lackluster confidence when she answered his question about what grade she was in (“I'm... a senior?”) did not deter his enthusiasm. Jimmy startled any time someone outside the Homicides addressed him and it took some time to shake him out of feeling psychologically dirty. He was furious with himself for reasons he wouldn't share with the rest of the group, so they usually had to wait out his minor fits, which consisted of him distracting himself by picking at his skin. Edgar had an entire conversation in the band room with the girl who had spoken to Johnny in the cafeteria and while he thought he came out of it not looking like an alien, his heart was racing and he felt slightly nauseated for about ten minutes after the conversation ended and he didn't know why. Johnny sang a random song lyric at any student who saw him without making eye contact, but avoided any and all teachers, whether they could see him or not. Without Tenna's ability to turn the invisibility on and off at will, they risked being grabbed, forced, trapped, or held in locked rooms until non-existent parents came to get them if they drew attention to their world outside of their faked school lives.

 

Edgar and Johnny brought the others to meet Dib, who agreed to enter data about them into the school's databases 'just in case.' He'd watched their first performance through the cafeteria security cameras and requested Edgar record their next one in exchange for the data entry. Edgar easily agreed, the others shrugged, and Dib set off to work. Despite not existing at all prior to that day, Johnny C, Edgar V, Devi D, Tenna G, and Jimmy D all now sported academic records of passing but not attention-worthy grades extending back four years.

 

Devi and Tenna took Johnny in the middle of the night to remove the last of the photos and other important items from his office, 'just in case'. They filled Tenna's van with boxes of music, art supplies, clothes that Johnny had stashed in filing cabinets, and the old beanbag Edgar had sat on his first day meeting everyone. The next morning, everything came out of the van and went into Edgar's garage. It was painful seeing it all there like displaced refugees, even though it was now safer than it had been the day before.

 

That night, they all went together to collect what they wanted, tie up loose ends. Devi collected two duffle bags of supplies from the school's photography lab in the basement while Tenna filled grocery bags with fabric and thread from the abandoned sewing classroom. Upon further consideration, she recruited Jimmy as a pack mule and took a sewing machine too.

 

They had more rituals than they'd realized, and they spent the night ending things in a way that made them 'okay' in the event they couldn't be seen again. Tenna was broken up about Shmee the Wolverine, even though Devi reminded her she could come in invisibly as much as she wanted. Tenna insisted it was not the same and said she wasn't sure she could have fortune cookies again.

 

Johnny added ‘ _beyond_ ’ to the list of locations to explore under the bleachers and Jimmy risked breaking his neck climbing the scaffolding to write something no one else could see on the underside of a seat. Edgar added some of his own song lyrics to the wall while Tenna elbowed him and asked if he was going to carve his and Johnny's names in a heart. He pointedly did nothing of the sort and then Tenna threatened to do it for him.

 

Jimmy stole snacks for everyone from the vending machine the old fashioned way, using his freakishly long arms like he had before Johnny had found keys. He was very proud of the slightly squished Twinkies and brownies as he presented them to the group, and took bites of his own between raiding the music room and the nurse’s office for future supplies.

 

Devi expressed concern that Jimmy was the only one to consider that they might need medical supplies in the future if they couldn’t access the school.

 

They left blood on the floor of the choir room (with Johnny doing Devi’s share, as promised, though she did prick her finger 'just in case' it was the last time) and Johnny removed the key ring from his hip. They only keys that remained with him at all times after that were the main school doors, the two for the choir room, the roof, the pool, Edgar's house key, and, of course, the one to Hell around his neck. The others – every register, vending machine, closet, gym, classroom, lab, and bathroom – he stored in his bedroom in Edgar's house, “just in case.”

 

 

 

With all other tasks complete, all that was left was for Johnny and Edgar to visit the roof after the others had all gone home ahead of them.

 

Johnny paused outside the door once he unlocked it. “I used to think I'd never be opening this, let alone thinking that I might be visiting it for the last time. I feel like I just got this place.”

 

“Yeah, me too.”

 

The wind whipped around them when Johnny opened the door and he took a deep breath, savoring it. “I hope it’s gonna be worth it.”

 

Edgar looked up into the stars, and couldn't think of more than once he'd seen anything else when he was here. “Well, we’re usually here at night, right? I don’t think we’ve lost this as much as you think.”

 

“It's like Tenna and Shmee, it’s just going to be different.”

 

“We knew that when we started doing this.”

 

“I know, I know.” Johnny licked his lips and took in the scenery. “I just thought there was a good chance it wouldn’t work, and we’d just be doing this forever, and I wouldn't have to worry. Now it’s like I’ve been kicked out of something that's always been mine, but it's also me doing the kicking out.”

 

“Do you regret it?”

 

Johnny stared out over the town and was quiet for several seconds. “No.” He looked at Edgar. “Do you?”

 

“No.”

 

Johnny closed his eyes. “I should tell you something, though.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m scared.”

 

Edgar would never have the right response for words Johnny had never spoken before, and Johnny knew it. He opened his eyes, smiled weakly at Edgar, and gripped his elbows, hugging himself in his neon green hoodie.

 

“Of which part?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny shook his head. “Oh, you have no idea.”

 

“You could give me an idea. I want to help.”

 

“I appreciate the gesture, I do. Really. But you don't know it'll be okay, even if that's what you want to say.”

 

Edgar smiled at him, a bit self-conscious. “You told me once you believed it when I said it.”

 

“I did say that, didn't I?”

 

Johnny didn't wait for answer, and he wouldn't have heard if Edgar had given him one. Instead, he spun away from Edgar to the center of the roof with his arms wide, inviting the stars into his lungs. He looked ready to sing into the sky and then just sadly dropped his arms.

 

Edgar walked up beside him. “What's wrong?”

 

“I don't know. I really don't know. This isn't...” He looked from the stars and into Edgar's eyes. “I don't want to lose it, but it's also not enough.”

 

“Maybe part of you is already out there somewhere.”

 

“Maybe. Once an idea is planted, you can't stop it, right?”

 

Edgar nodded and looked up to the stars. “Yeah, something like that.”

 

“I wonder if this is it, though.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I wonder if there isn't anything outside this place. That maybe that big road doesn't go anywhere, that none of the roads do. I wonder if the van can't go that fast without coming open is a symptom of it. Like it's just us here in this little snowglobe.”

 

“...I think I've seen a movie like that.”

 

Johnny smiled at him. “Of _course_ you have.”

 

“He ended up hitting the edge of the world, and opening a door in the sky.”

 

“Up and over.” Johnny hooked two fingers from each hand onto his necklace.

 

Despite the slight chill, a determined warmth rushed through Edgar's bones. “Yeah.”

 

“That feels better. I don't even know why.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “I try.”

 

“Yeah, and you just --” Johnny stopped and shook his head. “It doesn't make a lot of sense, you being like this, but I'm not complaining.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Knowing exactly what to say? All the time? To _me,_ who has never been a quirky loveless movie girl with a trendy job?”

 

Edgar laughed. “I _do_ remember you, you know. And I know you now. This isn't _all_ weird TV powers.”

 

Johnny nodded, though it was a bit solemn. “And I guess I used to be a little more difficult than this.”

 

“I think the stakes were higher, at the very least.”

 

Johnny looked at him with a jolt. “He didn't want to hurt you.”

 

“Oh, I...”

 

“I don't think he was able to tell you properly.” He gripped the necklace tighter. “He wasn't able to tell you anything properly, it was all so fucking shattered.”

 

“It's okay, you don't have to focus on it. I didn't mean to open all this up.”

 

“He was so frustrated that you didn't trust me.” His eyes grew distant, and Edgar hoped his mixture of pronouns wasn't a problem.

 

“I trust you _now._ ”

 

“Yeah. I know. It's good, it helps.” Johnny's hands dropped from his neck and gripped his sleeves at his elbows. On anyone else, it might look like a chill. On Johnny, it was his usual sign of distress.

 

Edgar stood near him and touched his elbow. “Hey.”

 

Johnny didn't flinch or blink or do anything at all that suggested he was even consciously in control of the hand that latched onto Edgar's.

 

“I don't actually know if things will be okay,” Edgar said. “You're right. I've never known. But I'll feel better about opening doors to the sky or finding out there isn't a sky at all if I'm with you when I do it.”

 

Johnny puffed a little air through his nose, laughing at himself. “And that makes you say it'll be okay, huh? End of the world is okay if I'm there too?”

 

“Yeah. Much better than doing it alone.”

 

Johnny took his other hand from his arm and took hold of Edgar's elbow rather than his own. “You wouldn't be alone. You'd have Devi and everybody.”

 

“Not without you I wouldn't. They only trusted me after you did, and you only trusted me because I remembered the right things. Plus, you're...” He shrugged one shoulder, unable to come up with any word that described this accurately. “Well, this is a little different.”

 

Johnny laughed, properly this time. “Yeah, okay, this is different.”

 

“Unless there's something I should know about you and Devi or something,” Edgar teased.

 

“Yeah, I see her in the copious amount of time I spend away from you.”

 

Edgar laughed with him. He hadn't planned it to be this way – though he was somewhat ashamed that he didn't mind – but he and Johnny had not spent more than a few hours here and there away from each other since the day they met. It was probably unhealthy. Jimmy likely had a dozen text books about forming independent identities and dependencies and how doing exactly this at exactly these ages was the worst possible thing to be doing.

 

 _Our lives aren't normal, though. We're not supposed to be living with only four people to interact with. So I think we can argue this is a special case. Still, it's good that I know,_ he thought.

 

“ _And knowing is half the battle,”_ echoed an old Saturday morning habit.

 

Johnny smiled at him. “Okay, so are you ready to develop crippling identity issues with me or do I need to start having them with Devi?”

 

“I think I'd have them _without_ you, so you sharing them with me is arguably healthier.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic.”

 

Edgar leaned slightly closer and Johnny completed the motion, letting their foreheads touch. It made his blood race through him as through on a mission to save his life. “I don't know either. Right now, this is what I have, and I love it, so –

 

“Oh, look, it's my favorite doomed idiots! Makings things worse for yourselves, I see.”

 

Edgar jumped back in surprise, but Johnny's instinct was to lunge at Pepito as he floated just beyond the edge of the roof. Edgar barely held him back by his elbows.

 

“The fuck do you want?!” Johnny snapped.

 

“I've seen what you've been doing,” Pepito answered. He floated down and took a seat on the wall. “What good do you see this doing you?”

 

Johnny pulled against Edgar's grip. “I'm not accountable to you, fuck off!”

 

“It's not going to stop anything. Nothing I warned you about can be stopped now.”

 

“Could it ever have?” Edgar asked.

 

“No. This was all set up before you two met, before you even manifested here. You made a deal, I made a deal, we're all just sailing on until the end.”

 

“You?”

 

Johnny scoffed. “Why even indulge him? He's just here to tell us nothing and feel important again.”

 

Pepito ignored Johnny. “Yes. Our interests happened to dovetail nicely.”

 

“Who is 'our'?”

 

Pepito sighed. “Oh, you know. Folks from Heaven, me for Hell.”

 

Johnny stopped resisting Edgar and instead stepped back toward him. “Just folks? Not God or whatever? Is that a thing?”

 

“Oh, he's a thing, I suppose, but he doesn't do much. Seems he hasn't seen what's transpired for a long time and the rest of us are left to cope with it while he sleeps it off. It's made things easier, mostly. Most of the people negotiating for Heaven don't have much personal stake in it, or any at all, in fact! They can't seem to get anyone to care consistently, so, usually, they're people my father recruited. But,” he shrugged, “it's their job, you know how it is.”

 

No wonder everything was a mess. Hell was both sides of cosmological coin.

 

“Why are you saying all this?” Johnny asked warily.

 

“Perhaps I was tired of being screamed at every time I visited you. Perhaps I realized that some things were now inevitable and it was better if you understood. Perhaps Todd just thought I _should_ and I listen to him.”

 

“Squee's been around as long as you have,” Johnny said. From his tone, Edgar guessed that Johnny was hoping to surprise Pepito with what he knew, but Pepito seemed unfazed.

 

“He was rather involved, yes. He's been with me since this all started.”

 

“And he knew the other ones.”

 

“He knew the _first_ you. We skipped most of round two. I thought he'd seen enough and I couldn't leave his fate to disgruntled workers like you people.”

 

Edgar gripped Johnny's arm. “Us?”

 

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Pepito sighed dramatically. “This is terrible! Look at you, they couldn't get anything right.” He began counting out their faults on his fingers. “You have no families, you're invisible, and they didn't separate all these lives properly. Maybe some of that was intentional for whatever scheme they're concocting up there, but all of it? Surely not. Trust me, someone was getting ready to go home for the weekend when you kids were put together.”

 

Edgar's heart crowded everything else for real estate in his chest. Wholesome movies flashed before his eyes instead of his life. Holidays and birthdays that were spent with other people instead of with boxes in his basement. “We – we were supposed to have _families_?”

 

“I would assume so. That's how this sort of foolishness should work, isn't it? I don't know all the details, it's not my part, but every now and then I assume a baseline of competence in my counterparts upstairs. Still, whatever happened, it was not my doing. I showed up, did what I had to do, and went home. The rest of what they did is on them.”

 

“What the fuck,” Johnny said.

 

Pepito placed his hand on his chest. “You'll notice _I'm_ the one who contacted you to try to help and no one from the other side has, so take that into account when forming your opinions.”

 

“What the _fuck_ ,” Johnny repeated.

 

“Indeed,” Pepito replied dryly. He glanced down at his nails and flicked some gravel off the side of the roof. “Listen, I'm going to give you some advice.”

 

Edgar groaned. “We know, we know: incredible pain, get away from each other, everything is terrible, love is dead.”

 

“Not that,” Pepito said. “I don't think there's anything to be done about that anymore unless one of you stabs the other one in cold blood. And even then, you're so... Well, it's irrelevant. I've just seen what you're doing and my suggestion is to get away.”

 

Johnny's hand slid to his neck and he twisted his finger around his necklace. “From?”

 

“You know what you have there,” Pepito said, nodding toward the key. “Do you know what happens when you use it?”

 

“Use it? You guys said it was the key to Hell, where would I fucking use it?”

 

“Your little friend with the cameras knows that house isn't really there.” Pepito shifted his weight on the edge of the roof and gestured to his home across the street. The keys looped around his body clanked against the concrete. “And you know who I am. I know you've never actually taken any classes, but that is some pretty simple math.”

 

“Hell is just an empty lot?” Edgar asked.

 

“It may look like something else, should it ever open.”

 

Edgar watched Johnny wrap his fingers around the key. “Is that something I can do accidentally?”

 

“That key opens a lock here,” he shook the loops of tattered fabric smoke that wrapped around him, “among all this. I've done my best to lose track of it.”

 

“So unlocking Hell is different from just walking through your front door?” Edgar asked.

 

Pepito laughed. “You're the one who was raised by the television, right?”

 

Edgar's face grew hot. “Yes?”

 

“You ever watch one of those cartoons that shows the cartoon being made? They show an ink spill, and then it takes over every open space, every corner, everything, until everything is black but the animated bunny's eyes?”

 

“Yes?” He wound his fingers into Johnny's hoodie and Johnny actually drew closer.

 

“Imagine that now. Imagine that right here. Imagine black engulfing everything. Nothing is too important, too dense, too holy for it to even pause. The lights do not go _out_ , they cease to be light. It all turns black and then it _is_ the black.” He pointed to Johnny. “That's what happens when you use that key. You two died once because of that key. Everyone did. There is no episode end card when that happens in real life.”

 

“And you threw something that could do that at a random highschooler? With no explanation?” Johnny snapped.

 

“You're anything but random. You were the best choice to give it to. And now with it there like that, stuck to you? We're safe from the void for a while.”

 

“ _I'm_ the best choice for this?”

 

Pepito shook his head. “One version of you is. Or maybe it's the combination of you and Glasses here, I don't know. It all got complicated toward the end last time and to be honest, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention after I knew I was getting what I needed.”

 

“The only versions of me you knew _killed people,_ why would --”

 

“Who better to be in charge of a key to Hell?” He snarled in mockery and waved dismissively at them. “It's thematic, _one_ of you should find it appropriate.”

 

“And you stuck it to me?”

 

“I didn't do that, as I pointed out last time. It did that itself.”

 

Johnny twitched against Edgar's grip. “What, does it just decide?”

 

“We know what it does when it hears you say your own name. It wants to go home, it wants to do what it did before.”

 

“Why my fucking _name?_ ”

 

“What, as opposed to a dark incantation? Which are you more likely to say on a daily basis without arcane coaching? It wants to do what it was made to.”

 

Johnny's lip quivered and Edgar felt several of his muscles tighten. “Get it off me.”

 

“I can't. And at this point, even if I could, I wouldn't. Squee wouldn't like hearing that, but it's how it is. I'm interested in you taking that far away from me and then… well. And _then._ ”

 

“And then what?” Edgar prompted.

 

“I can't tell. That part's not mine, and I'm bound by certain rules. It wasn't my idea, and I've been trying to minimize the damage it will cause, but I can't say anything more than what I have about it.”

 

There was a metallic groan and a scrape as the door to the roof opened. Todd looked out at Edgar and Johnny from just beyond the threshold and then turned his attention to Pepito.

 

“I didn't expect you to listen to me,” Todd said.

 

Pepito shrugged. “I always do. Eventually.”

 

“Oh my god, what are you telling them?” He stepped through the door and shut it behind him. “They look sick.”

 

Edgar swallowed, trying to will himself to project 'healthy and well-adjusted'. Johnny said nothing, did nothing, still stood against Edgar with every muscle in his body trying to recoil from the key around his neck.

 

“I talked to Dib,” Todd said, addressing Edgar. “He said you --”

 

Pepito startled. “You did _what_?”

 

“I talked to the kid with the cameras.”

 

“You _talk_ to him?”

 

“I talk to all sorts of people. Dib is kind of overwhelming, but he –“

 

“Todd, what happens if he –?”

 

“He can't. Nothing will happen. He's harmless.”

 

Some of the tension in Johnny's back began to fall away, though it could still be heard in his voice. “What does Dib have to do with any of this?”

 

“Nothing,” Todd said. “Dib just mentioned what you'd been doing lately, and I told him who I was and some stuff about aliens. It was just a talk. And then I told Pepito that he should try one more time to talk to you. I thought he might get through this time. After we last talked, I didn't think you'd listen to me.”

 

“Frankly, I prefer you,” Johnny told him. “You always seemed okay to me.”

 

“Well, I was a kid, so --” Todd laughed nervously. “Sorry, it's just – It's so weird to look at you like this.”

 

“Because you knew me before.”

 

“Yeah. I'm sorry. I wanted you to be better. I wish you hadn't remembered all the... I didn't want to tell you.”

 

Johnny licked his lip and his breath sounded stuck in his throat. “Yeah.”

 

“But now that you _do_ know, it's easier for us to tell you things.”

 

“Can you tell us what he can't?” Johnny nodded to Pepito. “About all this horrible pain bullshit?”

 

Todd sighed and his shoulders sagged. “I can't. Technically, I'm neutral, and I should be able to, but I've been with him so long that, unofficially, I'm an associate of his and I count as part of Hell. For most purposes, I'm bound by the same rules he is.”

 

“How long has it been?” Edgar asked.

 

Todd shook his head, and Pepito answered. “We don't know.”

 

“You just said you were there,” Edgar challenged.

 

“We were,” Todd said, “but after what happened, it was hard to track time since we didn't really exist inside of it.”

 

Pepito tapped Todd's arm and hushed him.

 

“What?” Todd looked between Pepito and Edgar and Johnny. “Don't they – He didn't tell you it was him, did he?”

 

“Squee!” Pepito hissed.

 

Johnny's eyes darted between them. “What was him?”

 

“What killed you the first time. What killed everything. When we were kids,” Todd explained, “we were playing with his dog. Or, I was... trying not to die while playing with the dog.”

 

“Woofles wouldn't have hurt you,” Pepito grumbled, chin in hand, now seemingly resigned to Todd telling the story.

 

“I was at his house because my parents were trying to pretend I was a hallucination again and Pepito's mom was more likely to feed me.”

 

Johnny frowned. “Your parents were bad people, Squeegee.”

 

“I know. You – he used to tell me that. But, honestly, so was everyone I knew. Pepito is the Anti-Christ and thought he was my best friend, a serial killer was breaking into my bedroom and leaving me gifts, my teacher was trying to brainwash me, and I watched kids my own age mauled to death by small animals. My parents just kind of _were.”_

 

 _“_ I didn't _think_ I was your best friend,” Pepito corrected.

 

“It worked out,” Todd replied. “Either way, Pepito wanted to show me “something cool”, and took that key from his father's office.”

 

“Satan has an office,” Edgar whispered, mostly for Johnny's benefit.

 

“I was thinking the same thing,” Johnny whispered back. Despite the subject matter, he'd relaxed significantly. If Johnny was still able to see humor in terror, he was doing well. Edgar hoped it meant for the same for him.

 

Todd continued as though he hadn't heard them. “He was supposed to inherit the key, he thought it was his by right.”

 

“It was,” Pepito snarled.

 

“And then you used it and found out you were too small to handle it. I couldn't even tell where the black was coming from, it was like it didn't have an origin, it just _was._ And it was just... I knew what it was, it was like I recognized it. I was what, ten?”

 

Pepito shook his head. “I don't know.”

 

Johnny looked at Pepito and his lip curled. “You wiped out the whole world because you were bored with your dog?”

 

“Consider it a sign of what I can do,” Pepito snapped.

 

“You can't do anything!” Johnny yelled. He stayed in Edgar's hold, safe, supported should he collapse, but radiating anger so much Edgar swore he could feel it in his hands. “The black was the key, everyone dying was the key, that it's stuck with me is all it too! You didn't do shit!”  
  


Pepito rose from his seat and Edgar pulled Johnny back just as Todd stood between them. “Pepe, no.”

 

“It wasn't me, was it?” Pepito challenged. “The key will work for any poor fool, sure, but the unlocking responds to the power of the wielder. It unleashes the black with the power of the one holding the key. It destroyed the world when I was a _child_.” He spread his arms and his hands began to smoke while a distinct glow formed in his eyes. “What do you think it would do now?”

 

“You should just _go_ ,” Todd said to Edgar. “Take it and him away, and try not to think about this again. Just go.” He turned toward Pepito and the smoke began to phase him out in the same way. “Go and be happy for a bit.”

 

“I--”

 

“You fucking coward!” Johnny screamed after Pepito.

 

“Yes,” Pepito's voice echoed as he became nothing but black. “But we're both here because I am. I'll see you both at the end. Good luck.”

 

“He means it,” Todd said as he took hold of what used to be Pepito's hand. “Really, good luck.”

 

And they vanished.

 

The wind howled and whirled with the smell of burning.

 

Edgar looked at Johnny. “I'm betting they haven't spent a lot of time apart...”

 

Johnny made a straining and desperate whine and began tugging at the key on his neck.

 

“I don't _care_ what he's doing or about his little bite-size revelations, I just want this thing _gone_ , I want to scream until nothing comes out but _blood_ , I want --”

 

“Nny.”

 

“I want to _tear him apart at the seams,_ I want to HANG MYSELF with this FUCKING KEY just to get the chance to _shove it down his throat,_ I want to run so far and sing so much that everyone sees and I – I don't want them just to _see,_ I want them to be _AFRAID_ , I want –“

 

Edgar's arms settled around him and the rage settled with them.

 

“Then we run.”

 

Johnny stared at him, the red cord biting into his fingers as his fingertips turned red.

 

“You want to run, so we run. Todd said we should,” Edgar said gently. “You want to go, Tenna wants to drive, and bands should travel. Maybe especially invisible ones.” He took Johnny's hand away from the key and laced their fingers together. “So let's go.”

 

 

“ _looks like the neighbors think i'm scary too_

_and I have never had such fun_

_when the world you know is scared of you_

_you have nothing to run from”_

 

 

Johnny stared at Edgar, eyes wide, breath caught in his throat. He held the stare so long Edgar began to worry and then he blinked, relaxed, let out a long breath, and gripped Edgar's hand.

 

 

“Okay. Let's run.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Agent Mothman speaking.”

 

“Dib, I need a favor.”

 

“Really, Edgar? The last time I heard that, your other half left with a credit card.”

 

“He's persuasive like that. But what I need is actually related to that.”

 

“Hey, look, the fund is _big,_ but it's not _magic_ , I can't afford to – “

 

“It's not that,” Edgar interrupted. “It's just some small mechanic work.”

 

Dib's frown was almost audible over the phone. “So find a mechanic. I'm doing _work_ here.”

 

“We would, but you can see us and so far no mechanics can.” Edgar turned the crop circle pendant over in his fingers. “You can fix alien technology right?”

 

Dib instantly perked up. “You have some?”

 

“No, I have a regular Earth van that is probably older than we are. The door won't stay closed at high speeds. We think the latch is weak. If you can fix things from another planet, you can fix this, right?”

 

“Probably,” Dib admitted.

 

“Will you do it?”

 

“Only because of Todd.”

 

Edgar jumped from the phone a little. “ _Todd?”_

 

“He said Johnny sent him to me.”

 

“Oh, uh, right. Yeah.”

 

“Normally, I'd make you pay for your own junk and not piggy back on Johnny's contributions, but in this case...”

 

“Well, after last night, I might have something about Pepito. Until now he mostly showed up and told me and Johnny not to... date, I guess. But now he's talking about Hell.”

 

“Sure, I'll hear about that. Pepito, not your dating, I don't care about that. You might also consider granting me an interview for the forum in the future. You promised.”

 

“Are you sure you can fix it?”

 

Dib groaned in annoyance. “Of course I can fix it. Bring it to the parking lot, I'll look at it.”

 

“Now?”

 

“The sooner I fix this, the sooner I can back to looking at this data from Todd, and then I can prepare my blog for you guys.”

 

“We're going on your website?”

 

“And the forums. Unless you don't want a van.”

 

“...fine. Give me a few minutes, I'll have to wrestle it from Tenna.”

 

 

 

 

Edgar had never driven the van alone. He warned Tenna he would be taking it, but it was strange not to have her there. When he turned the key, the stereo assaulted him at full blast and had his heart racing for a minute or two.

 

Dib waited for him outside the school and directed him around the corner to the parking lot.

 

“I see,” Dib said when saw the door. “It shouldn't be much trouble. I'll call you when it's done.”

 

“That's it?”

 

“What?”

 

“I just thought there'd be more...” He waved his hands a bit. “Flash.”

 

“It's a van, Edgar.”

 

 

 

It was freedom.

 

 

Dib called him back two days to tell him to pick it up and, once he arrived, Edgar shut the door over five times before Dib shooed him away with a reminder that he'd be summoned for an interview when Dib thought the timing was best, whatever that meant. Edgar barely heard him in his excitement to get the van home. He drove the van back to his house and bounced through the door.

 

“Nny?”

 

“Ugh,” came the response from the couch. Johnny had spent a large portion of the last few days there, complaining about his head or his throat. When he wasn't there, he sitting alone in rooms around the house singing so hard he could be heard in every other room.

 

“Hey, hey, come on, get up, I have something to show you.”

 

“You can't bring it to me?”

 

“No, stop whining, come on.”

 

Johnny let Edgar drag him to his feet and he shuffled after Edgar and outside.

 

“Oh. It's the van. Wouldya look at that. Truly, I am elated beyond words. Well fucking done.”

 

“Yeah, you're hilarious. Come on, here, look.” Edgar went to the door he'd left open and dramatically slammed it closed.

 

Johnny tilted his head. “It's staying.”

 

“Yeah!”

 

“You got the door fixed.”

 

Edgar bit his lip.

 

Johnny ran to the door, opened it and slammed it himself. His face lit up and he beamed at Edgar. “We can go, we can get away from all this shit, we can see things, we – “

 

“We can run.”

 

Johnny hugged him for a flash of a second and then twirled away excitedly to the other side of the van. “Can we try it?”

 

“We shouldn't go on the highway without the others, Tenna would never forgive me.”

 

“Come on, you can think of something.” Johnny looked at him through the passenger side window. “Please?”  
  


Few things were harder to resist than Johnny saying 'please', though it wouldn't have even taken that. “Okay, get in.”

 

Johnny bounced in his seat and cranked the volume on the radio and for once Edgar did not care. He took them back to the school parking lot, raced to one end of it and shot back off in the other direction. Johnny rolled down the windows as Edgar whipped the steering wheel to one side and the van spun in large ridiculous circles. Johnny laughed or sang or screamed and Edgar did the same as the scenery blurred around them and the wind from the open windows stung their faces.

 

“Go the other way!” Johnny yelled.

 

“Okay, hang on!”

 

Edgar spun them the other direction and Johnny put one arm out the window and 'Wooo'd triumphantly into the sky. The radio screamed along with him.

 

 

_“I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies_  
_This is the dawning of the rest of our lives_  
_On holiday”_

 

 

All through donuts, figure eights, and the fastest speeds Edgar could manage in a lot half a block long, the air didn't even lick at the door. It not only stayed closed, it stayed _tightly_ closed.

 

“Wouldn't it be funny if you crashed this thing and then they couldn't get the door open to save us?!” Johnny called as they spun in another tight circle.

 

“Not really!”

 

Johnny burst into laughter and took Edgar with him.

 

When they came to a stop, Edgar sagged over the steering wheel trying to catch his breath. Johnny was reclined in his seat half laughing, half panting. He flailed at the dashboard to knock the volume on the music down. A strange sense of pride surged in Edgar's chest when Johnny looked at him.

 

“Fuck you,” Johnny panted.

 

“Likewise.”

 

Johnny swallowed and closed his eyes. He sagged into his seat and just breathed while the radio played on.

 

“ _Why don't you walk away? No buildings will fall down_ __  
_Why don't you walk away? No quake will split the ground_ __  
_Why don't you walk away? The sun won't swallow the sky_ __  
_Why don't you walk away? Statues will not cry_ _  
__Why don't you walk away? Why don't you walk away?”_

 

“Edgar?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“All things considered – and 'all things' feel hilariously limited and terrifyingly numerous at the same time – ” He looked back at Edgar and let out a soft laugh. “You are the best fucking thing that has ever happened to me.”

 

“ _Why don't you walk away?  
Why don't you walk away? ”_

 

Edgar had seen movies in which people were so happy they cried, but it happened so often he thought it might be a joke that he wasn't in on. He'd gone years without a reason for it to happen, so when it did it was exciting to discover it was a real thing. He wasn't sobbing, but here it was anyway, this hot tingling in his eyes and a tightness in his chest.

 

“You too,” he said, though his voice struggled through the surprise and the urge to cry that was so much more than just leaking eyes. He'd done a lot of feeling ridiculous since meeting Johnny and the others, but this was the best ridiculous he'd ever felt.

 

Johnny evidently thought Edgar needed to be saved from ridiculous. “Yeah, okay, honestly, _I'm_ the best thing that's ever happened to me too. You're a close second, though.”

 

Edgar laughed and wiped his eye. “That's not bad, I'll take second. But I meant --”

 

“I know what you meant.”

 

“Well, I – thank you.”

 

“It just sorta came out,” Johnny explained.

 

“Um, don't apologize. That was fantastic.”

 

“Okay.” Johnny looked at his hands, his boots, the radio, a loose thread on his painted jeans, anything but Edgar. “Thanks?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I mean, for this, too.” He motioned to the door. “This is great.”

 

“Are you still scared?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I don't know. I'm not trying to be difficult, it's just what's happening. I'm not sure I know what I feel, ever. It's not so much that I'm having feelings, it's more like they're just kind of happening to me. Shit feels like it changes appropriately – I mean, I'm pretty sure I was fucking pissed at Pepito, and I know I really liked all this just now – but I can't really identify what's going on most of the time, and if I can, I second guess it.”

 

Edgar smiled and put the van in drive. “But it's not scared.”

 

“I guess not... Where are we going?”

 

“I don't know. Do you want a Freezie? I get the feeling we won't get to spend much time alone for a while now.”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

In the second Edgar looked away from the road, Johnny grinned and was framed by afternoon sun, bits of dust and some very persistent glitter.

 

And he was perfect.

 

 

 

 

 

They hadn't loaded even a quarter of what they wanted into the van before Edgar wished Tenna had stolen a pick up truck instead.

 

“We're going to need a trailer or something,” he said.

 

Devi crammed a box in beside her drums. “We should probably steal that before too many more people can see us, then. Ideas, Ten?”

 

Tenna looked at them, incredulous. “What? You guys think I'm just Tenna's Stolen Shit Depot?”

 

“You got us a _whole van_ ,” Johnny said from inside, where he was stashing notebooks between the seats.

 

“ _Accidentally!_ ” Tenna defended. “It just happened to be there!”

 

“We should train you to be our acquisitions specialist,” Devi said, grinning and bumping her shoulder. She slid her hand in an arc in the air. “We just say, 'Tenna. Vespa,' and it's done.”

 

“No one needs a Vespa.” Johnny's voice was a bit muffled as he crammed things even deeper into the tiniest places of the back of the van.

 

“ _I_ do,” Jimmy said as he dragged a large box toward them.

 

“I rest my fucking case.”

 

Edgar shook his head. “We really do need more space, though.”

 

Devi nodded as she looked over the pile of 'to be packed.' “Or just less shit.”

 

 

 

Their final fit had the instruments in the back save for Jimmy's guitar, which was strapped into the seat next to him. Johnny and Edgar took the bench seat in the back, which included storage underneath, and Devi sat next to Tenna while she drove. There were boxes and bags and CDs and clothes and snacks and stashes of monster makeup supplies crammed in every possible space between them.

 

“Okay,” Tenna said as she buckled herself in, “how are we?”

 

“We'd have more space if we strapped Jimmy to the roof,” Johnny called up to her. “All in favor?”

 

Devi raised her hand about half way before Tenna forcefully put it back down.  Jimmy said nothing, only slowly extended his arm beyond the chair followed just as slowly by his middle finger.

 

Johnny laughed against Edgar's shoulder. He sounded bright and happy and alive and like nothing was or had ever been wrong with him. Even though they were about to go see and do new things, what Edgar wanted most was just to hold on to Johnny as he was right then and keep anything horrible from happening to him ever again. He wanted to see him embracing stars on the roof, and scream-laughing out of car windows, and throwing paint and crayons in a blender and just _being_ , with no baggage, past or present.

 

_I'd wanted to make him happy, right? Maybe the motivation is different, but it's the same desire to help._

 

Tenna pulled them away from Edgar's house with her usual enthusiasm, thought there was significant apprehension from everyone else. It began to melt away into anxious excitement however, as they approached the intersection leading to the highway. Stopped at a traffic light that marked the end of town, they stared into new territory.

 

“Guys, when this light changes, we'll be further than we've ever been.”

 

Johnny's face was nearly plastered to the window, but Edgar could still hear him singing, “ _You're older than you've ever been and now you're even older, and now you're even older..._ ”

 

The light changed and Tenna took them out onto the highway and around the slight left turn that had always been the edge of their world.

 

As she sped up the door held, but the occupants of the van were all focused forward.

 

The land rose up around the road, a bridge passed over top of it, and another road intersected it.

 

“It keeps going,” Johnny whispered.

 

“Yeah,” Edgar answered with just as much hushed awe.

 

The road curled uphill until more traffic lights and large signs began to come into view.

 

There was a collective gasp and every one was struck silent but Jimmy, who leapt at the window like a yappy dog. “Oh my god, you guys! That's a grocery store! A real grocery store!”

 

Edgar crowded Johnny's side of the seat to get a look. “Oh my god, it's huge...”

 

“Look at that parking lot!” Tenna gushed. “That's bigger than the entire school!”

 

Devi reached over and touched her shoulder. “Ten, look at the road, not the parking lot.”

 

“Fuck that!” Tenna shouted, suddenly veering to the left.

 

Edgar and Johnny toppled into each other and Jimmy fell out of his seat entirely as Tenna swung the van into the lot.

 

She slowed as she entered the little plaza and they took in the sights of all the small stores that had all this time been just slightly out of reach.

 

“A department store!” Johnny shrieked. “Those are _real_?! We need to go in.”

 

Devi looked at the others in dismay. “Guys, we just got on the road!”

 

Johnny unbuckled his belt before Tenna had even stopped the van. “So? Where the fuck do we have to be? Someone expecting you?”

 

And even Devi was stealing glances beyond the others and into the shop windows.

 

As soon as Tenna had them in park, Johnny climbed over Edgar to escape. He didn't stop to ask or suggest where they should go, he just set off in a determined stride toward the department store, the blue and black fabric of the skirt he'd layered over his jeans fluttering after him. He was already beyond the glass doors before the others could get out of the van.

 

Jimmy protested when the others went to follow Johnny and was only calmed when Devi promised that they'd look at the grocery store too. All was forgotten, however, when they stepped inside. Front and center was a “Spooky Deals” display, featuring a random array of appliances and home goods with pumpkin-shaped sale stickers and a liberal application of fake spider webs. Slightly to the right, they found the “Deals For End of Summer Fun” display consisting of a beach ball and a plastic bucket clustered among some mismatched clearance items.

 

With the spooky level of the Spooky Deals leaving much to be desired, Tenna ran right to the center of the 'Summer Fun' display and picked up a long box. “You _guys!_ This is a box of weenie roasting sticks! This is a thing that actually happens!”

 

Jimmy's immediate draw was a motor on the end of a long pole. “Is this a weed wacker?”

 

Devi nudged it with her foot. “In what way is that 'Summer Fun'?”

 

“Um, _I'd_ have fun with a weed wacker,” Jimmy said.

 

Edgar looked at him through a pair of binoculars. “You would not survive owning a weed wacker.”

 

“Maybe _you_ wouldn't survive me owning one,” Jimmy spat back.

 

Even though Jimmy's song didn't flare, Tenna flinched and set down the weenie pokers. “Ooooh, okay. Let's just not with that.”

 

“Indeed,” Devi said. “Where'd we lose Nny already, anyway?”

 

“Is there a music section? I bet he'd go there.” Jimmy stood on his tiptoes and craned his neck to get a look at the signs hanging from the ceiling. “Or kitchen shit, maybe?”

 

Tenna perked up. “They have _kitchen shit_?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Let's just walk. We'll run into him.”

 

He hadn't planned on 'just walking' being so difficult. Every turn was something new. Columns covered in mirrors, stacks of _new_ clothing (the same thing in many sizes!), mannequins playing golf (with tiny golfers on their shirts!), and a counter full of jewelry that sparkled in little turning cases.

 

It was still early morning and there were few other shoppers in the store, which made the experience a nice introduction to the world outside their school. Not counting the Homicides (and no one outside of them would), the staff still outnumbered the customers. It was far less crowded than the school they were used to, and while they were so focused on everything being so new and spotting Johnny, they hardly saw what people were there.  Which, really, was a fair trade. The other shoppers wouldn't see them either.

 

They found Johnny in the electronics and appliances section, staring in awe at a wall of televisions three times his height while wearing a magenta and blue crown covered in star-shaped tinsel and featuring long ribbon tails that trailed down his back.

 

There was a movie playing, the same on each screen, featuring people at a fancy ball, giving the appearance of Johnny lost in the center of some over-sized choreography.

 

“Shiiiit,” Jimmy whispered in awe.

 

The group slowed their pace as they drew nearer, taking in the spectacle. Edgar did not have a TV like these. His was gray and boxy, with a thick glass screen that attracted a ring of dust in the center. These sleek flat sheets were pristine, framed in shiny black, and formed a monolith of the outside world that made the most incredible person Edgar knew look ragged, dirty, and tiny.

 

Devi managed to break free of the hypnotic power of the TV wall to get next to Johnny. “Hey. Nice hat.”

 

Johnny flapped his hand at her. “Shhh, shhh. Can't you hear that?”

 

She looked at the others as they clustered around. “I sort of hear the movie?,” she said.

 

Tenna hooked her chin over Devi's shoulder while Edgar and Jimmy got close to the wall to leave fingerprints on everything they could reach. The televisions continued to be real even under their touch. “What are we hearing?” Tenna asked.

 

“Fucking _shut up!_ ” Johnny hissed.

 

Jimmy took a breath and opened his mouth, but Edgar swatted his shoulder before any words came out. Jimmy only shot him an accusing glare for a second before his attention returned to Johnny.

 

Johnny stared into the screens with wonder and terror, motionless but for the occasional blink.

 

Just as Devi took an annoyed step back, the screens went black. For a few brief seconds, there was nothing, just a bunch of patchwork teenagers staring into a wall of silent technology.

 

Suddenly, the screens filled with static. Johnny took a sharp breath, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open.

 

Edgar reached over and waved in front of his face. “Nny?”

 

Johnny startled and jumped back, knocking into Tenna.

 

“Whoa, whoa,” she said, laughing. “You okay?”

 

Johnny looked at them all in a surprised panic. “Didn't you hear her?”

 

A nervous feeling settled in around them. Jimmy drummed his nails on the display shelf. “Her who?”

 

“You didn't hear that? She was... talking to me, I think?”

 

Tenna shook her head. “We didn't hear anybody,” she said gently.

 

Johnny backed into Tenna's hands and actually didn't recoil from the contact. He looked at her wide-eyed, almost pleading. “She knew me. It - it wasn't words, but I think...” All around him, the others bit their lips, clasped their hands, shifted their weight. His flailing panic was quickly replaced with restrained discomfort. “I think we should go somewhere else,” he said.

 

They eagerly steered Johnny away from the electronics section and made a right into the children's section. Johnny was quiet and walked with his arms wrapped around himself, but at least did not seem in such obvious pained distress. Edgar walked close beside him, not touching, just nearby.

 

Jimmy and Tenna immediately ran for the baby display and began pelting each other with stuffed animals. Devi shook her head and grimaced at the ceiling. “Ugh, they are playing some seriously annoying music in this section.”

 

Edgar tilted his head and heard a chorus of about ten children singing about wheels on a bus. “Oh. Oh, wow, that's awful. I can't stop hearing it now.”

 

“You're welcome,” Devi said. “It's important that you people suffer with me.”

 

“Guys, don't you think it's weird that people even dress children?” Tenna yelled while swinging a toy at Jimmy. “Wouldn't you just keep them naked or in a bag or something?”

 

Jimmy dodged the plush rabbit she'd lobbed at him. “You mean like puppies in a sack in the river or some shit?”

 

“No, holy shit, like a potato sack dress or something, come on!”

 

Devi pressed her palms together and looked up at Edgar. “Look, we learned not to let Jimmy near children!”

 

“I think we already knew that.”

 

On the far wall hung a pink frothy explosion of accessories labeled 'For Your Little Princess.' There were tutus and wands and cone-shaped hats and backpacks covered in pink sequins and some familiar looking pink and blue tinseled ribbon tiaras. Edgar looked between the display and Johnny and tried not to laugh at the idea of anyone calling him 'Princess'.

 

“Is this where you got that?”

 

Johnny snapped out of his inner turmoil and blinked at him. “What?”

 

“The...” He pointed at Johnny's head.

 

Johnny reached up, following where Edgar was pointing until his fingertips hit tinsel. “Oh. Yeah.”

 

“It looks cute on you.”

 

Not a lie in the slightest, though Edgar suspected Johnny could look cute in one of Tenna’s potato sacks.

 

Johnny smiled at him, and there was absolutely nothing wrong in the world, no matter how little of it Edgar had actually seen.

 

“Thanks. I'm keeping it.”

 

“I had no doubt.”

 

Devi rolled her eyes and sighed loudly.

 

“Yes?” Edgar asked her. It may have come out a big smug.

 

“Nothing,” she said, and went to join Jimmy and Tenna.

 

He wasn't smug, _exactly_ , but the relationship had survived repeated intervention from the son of Satan and some extremely inconvenient murder memory. His friends' mild disapproval or jealously was now almost funny.

 

He was able to convince Johnny to join the others, and soon they were stretching child-sized t-shirts over Jimmy's head and Devi was taking photos of Tenna and Johnny biting the heads of the mannequin children.

 

They wandered into the men's department and had a necktie tying contest in which Tenna triumphed as the only person who not only did not strangle herself and tied something resembling a proper knot. Johnny left the area wearing a tie as a belt.

 

When they reached the center of the store, they found a set of black stairs rising into the ceiling and Tenna gasped in delight.

 

“An escalator?!”

 

She and Johnny made an immediate dash for it and rode excitedly about half way up before trying to keep the perfect pace to go nowhere while trying to walk back down. Johnny tripped a few normal visible people – surprisingly accidentally – and he laughed with such unrestrained delight that Edgar actually worried he'd be seen and carted off by security.

 

Jimmy dragged Edgar and Devi on as well and soon they were looping around between the floors like they were on a carousel. Not that Edgar really knew how that felt either.

 

Johnny collected clothes from every section of the store and draped them over his arm in anticipation of one ultimate fitting room fashion show. The others found things here and there, but by the time they found a fitting room, Johnny's pile of stuff almost obscured the clothes he was wearing.

 

Devi was on hand to take photos of everyone wearing matching white dress shirts, of Edgar's head and arms stuck in a shirt one size too small while Johnny stood next to him laughing from inside a shirt that draped from him like a curtain, and of Jimmy and Tenna wearing clothes in each other's styles. Edgar took photos of Devi and Tenna in elegant formal dresses which were then photobombed by Johnny and Jimmy wearing the same ones. Johnny and Tenna danced with and then had a mild fight over a feather boa, and Devi took a few items off of Johnny's reject pile for herself.

 

Johnny strolled behind a checkout counter and found himself some bags to stash everything he wanted. As they strolled out of the store with Johnny's excessive fashion haul, the detectors near the door began beeping and flashing. The cashier near the door didn't even look up from her phone to yell to the other girl in the area, “Jessica, the detectors are going off again. Want me to call Paul?”

 

Johnny spun in a circle on the sidewalk outside the automatic doors with his bags. “I think I'll miss being able to do that!”

 

“I still don't know where you plan to put all that,” Devi said as she and the others followed Johnny back to the van.

 

“They're clothes, they can go anywhere. We'll worry about it later, we have a grocery store to look at.”

 

 

 

 

The doors to the grocery store opened automatically with a soft _woosh_ , and they were momentarily stunned by the smell of cinnamon, and a rainbow of gourds and flowers under bright light from towering ceilings. Scattered among the flowers were plastic orange, red, and yellow leaves, garlands, pumpkins, tinsel spider webs, and other odds and ends intended to scream 'autumn.'

 

Devi let out a long breath and gazed around in awe. “Daaaamn.”

 

Johnny was the first to wander forward, and he went right for a pile of real actual corn still on the cob. “Holy shit, guys. This is real corn that you can just buy!”

 

Jimmy walked slowly behind him, picked up an ear, and held it like a sacred relic. “You know what? I kind of thought corn like this had just gone extinct. Like we could only see it on old Thanksgiving specials on TV but that was like a century ago so now the corn the school has is the only kind left.”

 

“I had no idea you were suspicious about corn,” Johnny told him.

 

“Until about thirty seconds ago, I didn't know either. _”_

 

“I know the feeling.”

 

There were tiny sprays periodically covering all the vegetables in a fine mist, and all the signs were made up on little chalkboards. Edgar found a barrel of pomegranates, picked one up, and couldn't even imagine how this was the texture of a food, let alone how he'd open one.

 

Devi and Tenna stood several feet away, looking at a bunched of bagged vegetables sitting under a display of herbs. Tenna obviously believed she was too far away to be heard.

 

“So do you think the cabbage will talk to him or something now?”

 

Edgar's heart sank.

 

“Shut up. And this is cauliflower.”

 

“I'm serious, Dev, what if he's hearing the _crazy_ kind of voices? The 'murder your family' kind. What then?”

 

Devi swatted her arm and Edgar abruptly looked away and feigned an interest in pistachios.“Shh!”

 

“Look, I'm scared, okay? I thought we were cool, but what if we're in the van? On the highway? And he just goes to crazy town?”

 

Devi gritted her teeth. “Not. Now.”

 

“I'm gonna say something. I'm glad we only got this far...”

 

“Ten, no.”

 

Across the produce section, Johnny stood holding a pineapple and laughing at Jimmy balancing a banana on his face. He also seemed blissfully unaware that Tenna was slowly losing faith in him before they'd even started their adventure.

 

Before Edgar could decide what to say, or if he should say anything, Johnny waved him over. Edgar took one long look at Devi and Tenna and then went to join Johnny.

 

“Look at this,” Johnny said, holding out the pineapple. “Can you believe someone looked at this spiky motherfucker at some point in history and said, 'I'm gonna eat that shit.'?”

 

“Are you bringing that with us too?”

 

“Maybe. I'm thinking I'll see how well Jimmy balances it on his face first.” His smile faded when he looked at Edgar and he narrowed his eyes. “What? What's wrong?”

 

“Nothing. I'm just... concerned.”

 

“He'll be fine, it's not that sharp, feel.” Johnny took one of Edgar's hands and tried to get him to take the pineapple.

 

“No, no, not that. Just thinking that this trip will be harder than we imagined.” It wasn't a lie, it was just unspecific.

 

Johnny set the pineapple down. “Second thoughts about leaving?”

 

“Not quite. I don't really know how to explain it.”

 

“You're scared because we don't know anything,” Johnny said knowingly.

 

“Something like that.” Across the aisle, Devi looked very grim against the peppers and mushrooms, though Edgar didn't see Tenna.

 

Jimmy balanced more produce on his face, and they toured the cheese counter as they made their way to the bakery, taking all the free sample cubes in every cup as they walked. Devi took one bite-size cupcake from a box of twelve, and Johnny nearly blinded himself playing with the self-scanner tool at the end of a nearby aisle.

 

Tenna came running into the bakery area after a few minutes of eerie absence and grabbed Edgar's shoulders. He braced for the group to use him as some kind of hostage in confronting Johnny but instead she just used him as leverage to bounce into the air and screamed, “Guys, they have lobsters!”

 

Johnny closed the lid on a cherry pie. “What?”

 

“ _Lobsters_. Just. Just chilling there. In _tanks._ ”

 

When they followed her, they found exactly what she described, though with some different features than expected. They were all a sort of mottled brownish color and had their claws held shut with colored bands.

 

“I thought they'd be red,” Edgar said.

 

“I think that's what happens when they boil them alive,” Devi said.

 

Jimmy gasped quietly.

 

There was nothing at all in the tank but water. No sand, plants, or food. Just a pile of restrained lobsters and clear walls.

 

Johnny put his hand on the tank and one lobster swayed his bound claw toward it. When Johnny moved his hand over the front of the tank, the lobster scuttled along after it.

 

“This is fucking insane,” Johnny said. “This doomed lobster can see me and most _people_ can't.”

 

“Maybe that's a thing,” Edgar suggested. “The only people who can see us are doomed to untimely deaths.”

 

Johnny lit up as though Edgar had just paid him a compliment beyond human ability.

 

Devi, Tenna, and Jimmy were eager to be visible to doomed lobsters too and they all smeared their hands over the glass, but even with a delighted Johnny next to him, Edgar couldn't stop staring at the bands on the lobsters' claws. Perhaps that would be the consequence of what they were doing. Eventually, they'd be visible to someone who wanted them stopped, who wanted to run them through databases of lost children, who wanted to send them to homes and away from each other.

 

What if they were lost and didn't know? Pepito said they should have had _families._ What if there really were five families out there who had somehow all misplaced their ten-year-olds seven or eight years ago? Had Edgar's face been on a milk carton somewhere while he was _so_ lost that he couldn't even be seen? Had they all been abducted? Should he have Dib run them through a database?

 

Edgar wandered through the rest of the store in a blur. As the others grabbed snacks, Edgar watched children crying over candy just down the aisle. Johnny rode an abandoned shopping cart up and down the aisles and narrowly missed toppling children stuck in the tiny seats in the other carts he passed. Slightly younger teenagers were dragging their feet behind their parents, being told to get this, keep up, put that down, take those headphones off.

 

This was the most realistic he'd been about this idea since almost since Johnny had it and it terrified him. How had he been distracted for so long? Had he really been trusting the supernatural to protect him and the others when it had ruined their chances to be normal for the rest of their lives? He'd been so eager to make things better after Pepito and Todd talked to them on the roof that he hadn't really processed it. What would happen to a pack of teenagers with no family and the key to Hell once they were exposed to a large enough population? Would Johnny literally unleash Hell on the unsuspecting people who thought they were helping him? Would their hypothetical families emerge from the woodwork and take them away? Would they be forced into orphanages or factories? Did that even happen anymore, or at all, ever, or did TV make that up? Even just being in a grocery store had shown him how much of television could vary as far as what was still real.

 

A panic he hadn't realized he'd been feeding rose in his guts, but then there was Johnny, laughing as he rode a shopping cart down the cereal aisle, drawing demonic features on all the cereal mascots and singing along to the radio as they swung into the dairy section, apparently without a care in the world.

 

“ _This chaos, this calamity, this garden once was perfect  
Give your immortality to me; I'll set you up against the stars _

 

 

_Gloria,_ __**  
**_We lied, we can't go on_ _**  
** _ _This is the time and this is the place to be alive”_

 

Johnny was not technically perfect, and Edgar knew it. His head knew, anyway. When confronted with Johnny's energy, his smile, his voice, or (especially, painfully, potently) his laugh, Edgar's heart screamed 'perfect' until Edgar's head almost bought it.

 

Even if Edgar's heart wasn't _always_ screaming 'perfect', Johnny made Edgar less afraid.

 

' _Fuck fear,' right?_

 

Because of Johnny, Edgar had learned to hear things that weren't there. Because of Johnny, he'd laughed more in the last two years than he ever had before. Because of Johnny, he'd ventured further into the world than he ever would have alone, he'd done things he didn't even realize needed to be done.

 

 

“ _Who shot that arrow in your throat?_  
Who missed the crimson apple?  
And there is discord in the garden tonight

 

 _The sea is wine red_  
This is the death of beauty  
The doves have died  
The lovers have lied”

 

Because of Johnny, someone they didn't know had _seen_ them. He'd changed their reality from sheer force of will and a vague notion of how to make it happen.

 

As Devi pushed his cart, Johnny spun in a circle, arms outstretched, and knocked over a display of tortilla chips. He laughed, knocking some more down on purpose and punctuating his motions with lyrics from the radio. On his final swirling gesture, he made eye contact with Edgar and grinned.

 

_We'll be fine._

 

And then, while Johnny laughed, wearing a tinsel crown and a necktie belt that somehow felt more stolen than anything else on him, the music stopped, a cashier called for someone called Tammy to come to the front, and then there was a static. Maybe for five, ten seconds, the store filled with what was probably the sound of the cashier failing to hang up her receiver properly.

 

It was long enough to freeze Johnny in place.

 

Just before the music returned, he looked at the others in an excited panic. “There! That!,” he exclaimed. “Can't you hear that?”

 

Tenna shook her head and took a step away from Johnny and his cart. “It was static,” she said.

 

“What do _you_ hear?” Edgar asked. Maybe it was Johnny's song, finally manifesting itself in white noise now that he was out free in the wilds of the snack aisle.

 

“It's... calling me.”

 

Tenna gripped Devi's elbow, and Jimmy tightened his hold a bag of noodles he’d been carrying for three aisles. “Right now? What's it saying?” he asked cautiously.

 

“I don't know. I guess it's not really words?” Johnny looked a bit lost. Just like when he'd stood before the televisions in the department store, here he was in a shopping cart surrounded by tortilla chips, small and ridiculous.

 

Edgar thought he'd try to be optimistic. “It's not a tune, is it?”

 

Johnny looked at Edgar, and despite a kid's sparkle tinsel crown and glitter, Johnny's eyes carried something frightening that washed over all of him. He was tiny, covered in second hand tatters, several day old stage makeup and chipped nail polish, but he was sharp and quick and one glance shot through Edgar's chest like a blade.

 

He flinched away the clanging, the splashes of red.

 

Johnny sang nine or ten notes of 'oh's, but they didn't come from the same place of joy he'd been singing from earlier. Edgar was not even sure they really came from _Johnny._

 

Devi stayed back, with Tenna still attached to her arm. “The static is _singing_ to you?”

 

He blinked at her, and the Johnny who inspired fear was gone. “I don't know?” He looked around him at the cart, at his hands, into the faces of the others. “I don't know, I just hear it! And I can just feel that it's for me!”

 

Devi frowned and looked at the others – particularly Tenna – and then began walking toward the exit. “I think we should just get going, then.”

 

Jimmy tossed the noodles into a rack of flavored popcorn and followed Devi and Tenna.

 

Johnny sank to his knees in the cart and gazed out at Edgar. “What the fuck just happened? They've never just – Do you think I'm just making this shit up?”

 

It had not been often before, if ever, that people just _walked away_ from Johnny. “No,” Edgar told him. “They're just scared because they don’t know anything. Let me help you out.”

 

Johnny nodded and rose shakily to his feet. He managed to climb out with a solid grip on Edgar's shoulders and kick the cart away. Edgar set him down gently, and to his somewhat shameful delight, Johnny did not hurry to let go.

 

“This is what happens now, huh?” He stared wistfully at the sliding door where the others had gone. “They just abandon me because they think I'm one bad radio station away from murder.”

 

“They're not leaving you, come on.” Edgar applied some gentle pressure to Johnny's ribs to steer him in the right direction.

 

Johnny moved, but somewhat reluctantly. “Why aren't you afraid anymore?”

 

“I trust you,” Edgar said. _I'm also crazy about you and don't want to be wrong._ _That's been my problem since day one._ “They'll trust you again too, they just need a while.”

 

“They're going to leave me in a ditch while I sleep.”

 

“Okay, now you're being dramatic.”

 

“I'm just emotionally preparing myself to accept it.” Johnny took a candy bar from the shelves by the registers as they left the store and as the doors opened he tore open the wrapper, broke the bar in two, and offered half to Edgar. “I could hold off on the drama for a while, though. For you.”

 

“Aww, for _me_? You _do_ care.” Even silly gestures like this made Edgar's heart do flips.

 

Johnny made a face at him, but still laughed, even with a mouthful of chocolate. “Only for you.”

 

The van drove up in front of them as they stood on the sidewalk laughing with candy bars. Tenna rolled down the window. “Stop flirting and get in, you losers.”

 

Edgar shrugged as the door slid open. “If we must.” He held his arm out in front of him. “After you.”

 

Johnny frowned and put his hands on his hips. “This is because I'm wearing a skirt and a tiara, isn't it?”

 

“No, I'm just going to take care of the drama while you hold off on it. You just be amazing, I'll do the theatrics.”

 

“ _Amazing,_ you say?” He placed his hand over his heart and made decidedly theatrical eyelash flutters. Edgar did not get to offer a retort, for they'd angered the Great Van Deity.

 

“Holy _shit_ , assholes!” Tenna yelled as she honked the horn. “Get in the fucking van!”

 

Johnny made a 'yikes' face at Edgar and they climbed into the back. It was hours before they stopped getting suspicious glares every time they laughed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe it's easier to start with what the songs were. 
> 
> The first one we see at all is Edgar's, and then we get:  
> Green Day - Holiday - when Edgar and Johnny are doing donuts in the parking lot  
> Franz Ferdinand - Walk Away - just after said donuts  
> They Might Be Giants - Older - Johnny sings a line from this while they're in the van, just about to leave town  
> The Hush Sound - Wine Red (Tommie Sunshine's Brooklyn Fire Retouch) - in the grocery store. This song was sort of partially in the original SWAN, as it was something of a placeholder for how I imagined all the Homicides' songs to sound when played together. I don't know if they'd sound quite like this anymore, but I didn't want to lose the song and I thought using it for real this time would be fun. 
> 
> And some other references: 
> 
> The 'slink' from the original SWAN finally rears its head, haha.  
> 'And knowing is half the battle' is from the safety lessons for kids they had at the end of G.I. Joe.  
> The movie Edgar talks to Johnny about is 'The Truman Show', which I have an intense fondness for.  
> Among many other references to the source material is Nny calling Todd 'Squeegee', which always cracked me up when I read the books. I liked the idea of it just coming out without him realizing it this time. 
> 
>  
> 
> Pepito gives us all some info that Johnny got much earlier in the original SWAN. And now Johnny and Edgar know at least how the first Johnny died. You can all thank Pepito that we're even having this story, haha. 
> 
> There is not a lot of action in this one, I suppose, but it is laying in the groundwork for a lot of things later, and there is a lot of Edgar and Johnny's relationship, which I feel like if you're reading this, you're here for, so it's all good. This Johnny is so much more able - and willing - to express things to Edgar that chapters containing this sort of stuff are even possible. I wanted it to be very clear that this relationship is not one-sided, and that's so much easier to do with a Johnny who is a little more willing to offer tidbits of feelings. He still keeps them in pieces and mostly out of view of everyone else, but they're there.
> 
> I felt like I couldn't skip the crew experiencing a lot of these things for the first time, as much as it was not just getting them to another place to do another proper performance. We'll be able to skip a lot of firsts now that just the idea of how much they don't know is laid out, but I thought it would be fun/important to see how easily distracted they are even right out of the gate because of how limited their world has been until now. For the last year or so, I've been doing a lot of mundane things and imaging how this group would see them, as well as recalling my childhood discoveries (and continuing adult alienation) and that's been informing a lot of their reactions.
> 
> Johnny's androgynous fashion choices are laid out in this one too. He keeps himself very covered, but he's got a long fluttery skirt going on over some thinning jeans in this one (black and blue, of course, because this seems to be the side of the 'black and rainbow' spectrum he favors). I love the image of him grabbing a tiara from the kids' section and then just rocking it.
> 
> At this point, I've added enough hints to things coming or to threads I'd always wanted to explore that I'm making myself impatient as I write these, haha. It's so far meant that I've been really productive, so let's hope it carries through.


	20. feel it in your bones long before it burns your eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Homicides take the van to the city, and give their first performances as strange anomalies.

The city they'd been aiming for was supposed to be only an hour away, but that estimate had not accounted for the things they'd see on the way there. No one in the van had ever seen a real cow before, and when a pasture containing dozens of them emerged along the side of the road, Tenna slammed on the breaks and ordered everyone out to look. They were bigger than Edgar had imagined, but also smelled worse.

 

They stopped at a gas station courtesy of Dib's alien research credit card and Tenna tried to get Edgar to fight her with the windshield washer.  Johnny and Jimmy wanted to go the weird historic cult village, and Devi was tempted by a sign about artisan shops.

 

Near sunset, with most of the day wasted on weird side trips, a sign whizzed by that labeled a river. Tenna laughed. “Oh, bullshit. Why would they need to bother letting us know there's some water ten feet wide down th--”

 

And then the road in front of them opened onto a bridge, and below it was the most water any of them had ever seen, a mile or more across and stretching forever in both directions. There was a river in their town, though if this thing was also a river, rivers were exactly like dogs and could be nothing like each other and still called the same thing. What they'd played in at home was maybe fifteen feet across, shallow enough to see the rocks on the bottom, and did not warrant a sign announcing it existing.

 

“Fuck me,” Tenna whispered. “This thing is _huge._ ” Tenna's song quivered and Edgar had trouble keeping track of its tune.

 

“Ten, stay on the road,” Devi said firmly, grabbing the wheel. Her song softened in response to Tenna's becoming frantic.

 

“What if the bridge just collapses?” Jimmy asked, his voice and his song quickly escalating into a panic. “How many people can it hold? Is it moving? Are _we_ moving? What if we fall in? How deep is it?”

 

Tenna gripped the wheel hard. “Your pilot would appreciate if you saved those questions for _the other side of the bridge_ , thanks.”

 

“ _The lake it is said never gives up her dead..._ ,” Johnny sang.

 

“Ha. Ha,” Tenna said.

 

“ _There's a girl sleeping under the river,”_ Johnny sang back, changing songs. _“Where the snow and the rain collide...”_

 

“Nny, stop it,” Tenna said.

 

“ _There's a girl that we watch and we'll soon be with her_ ,” Johnny continued.

 

Devi whirled around and smacked her hand on her seat. “Hey, can we keep the canary of death quiet back there?”

 

Edgar shook Johnny's elbow. “Stop, stop, if Tenna freaks out while we're on this thing, no one will even be able to see our bodies when we go over the side.”

 

“Holy fucking shit,” Jimmy said. “We're gonna be invisible mummies on Mysterious Mysteries.”

 

“ _Exquisite dead guy, rotating in his display case..._ ” Johnny sang over Jimmy's shoulder, jumping to yet another song.

 

“Everyone just shut up!” Tenna screamed.

 

They were silent until all four of the van's wheels were safely on solid ground across the river, and then Tenna and Devi turned the stereo on so loud that Johnny yelped and tried to hide his head against Edgar's shoulder.

 

Tenna needed to take a break a few miles later and pulled them off the road, but left the stereo on when she got out of the van to walk around in the yellowing grass at the side of the road.

 

Devi opened her door and leaned outside. “Ten? You okay?”

 

Tenna sat in the grass and stuck her lower lip out. “No, I think I'm going to have a tantrum!”

 

Devi shook her head. “Okay, let us know when you're done.” She turned back to the others still in the van. “Anyone want to take pictures?”

 

Edgar looked out the window at the highway and the dying grass, which was what they'd been looking at for miles before this issue with the bridge. “Of?”

 

“Us,” Devi said. “Might as well document this abortion of sanity we're all having.”

 

Johnny was absorbed in a notebook, frantically writing. The words Edgar caught were 'end,' 'black,' and 'ink.'

 

Uh oh.

 

“Nny?”

 

Johnny said nothing. He drew a few arrows between words and tapped his chin with his pen. Hopefully this was just writing songs and not some kind of episode.

 

“Hey,” Edgar tried again, louder this time.

 

Devi was not so patient and clapped her hands repeatedly. “Hey, asshole, let's go! You still owe me!”

 

Johnny startled and hugged the notebook to his chest. “What? No, fuck you, you got your blood.”

 

“And we might not be coming home to something we have to bleed on, so I'm gonna take pictures of you and your tiara in the wild.”

 

“Fine.” He resentfully slapped the notebook closed and set it on the seat. He waved his hands in a shooing motion in Edgar's face. “Come on, let's move.”

 

“She just said _you_.”

 

“Will you fucks just get out of the van?” Devi growled. “Tenna's gonna be a while.”

 

The car stereo continued to play while Devi had a photo shoot composed of people not listening to her.

 

_“Skip town. slow down_  
_Push it to the east coast_  
_Step down turn around_  
_Push it to the west “_

 

She was able, as always, to get nice shots of Johnny, but largely because photographs appealed to his ego. Even when he whined about doing it, he was still a complete natural at dramatic posing. Before she lost the sunset entirely, Devi was very pleased with some shots she got featuring Johnny's newly acquired tinsel.

 

_“Need less, use less_  
_We're asking for too much I guess_  
_Cause all we get is...”_

 

There were several of Tenna sitting cross-legged in the grass, growing less angry with each shot.

 

“ _Dead Disco”_

 

Jimmy lying in the grass, staring at the sky, knees bent, listening to Johnny singing along to the words coming from the van and not listening at all to Devi's instructions about where to put his limbs.

 

“ _Dead Funk”_

 

Edgar seated on the edge of the pavement, turning small stones over between his fingers.

 

“ _Dead Rock and Roll”_

 

When Tenna calmed down, she came over and demanded Devi's camera, taking photos of Devi with the others, turning the camera on herself and taking a photo cheek to cheek with everyone else (except Johnny, who was more like 'almost cheek to cheek'), and getting one photo of Johnny putting the tiara on Edgar that, once he saw them all, was secretly Edgar's favorite of the entire set.

 

_“Remodel_  
_Everything has been done_  
_La la la la la la la la la la”_

 

“Okay, I'm good!” Tenna announced, handing the camera back to Devi. “Let's move, people.”

 

She waved everyone into the van but purposely tripped Johnny as he stepped out of the grass and onto the edge of the road. He made a pathetic squeak when his hands and knees smacked the pavement and Edgar jumped down to help him.

 

“You're an asshole,” Tenna said cheerily, and walked around the front of the van to get back behind the wheel.

 

“Fucking noted,” Johnny spat as Edgar hauled him to his feet. He brushed some gravel from his dirty gloves and winced when he tried to do the same to his knees. The fall had been minor, but it ripped a small hole in one knee of the thin jeans Johnny had on under all his other flash. A speckling of red dots began to well up between all the shredded skin and Johnny swore under his breath as he climbed back into the van.

 

Jimmy leaned around his chair to get a look at Johnny. “You okay?”

 

“I'm fine!” Johnny snapped as he grabbed his notebook. He scribbled in it quickly and then forcefully shoved it into Edgar's arms, pen and all.

 

Tenna started the van. Devi said something to the tune of, “Leave it alone.”

 

Edgar hesitated to look down, but when he pulled it away from his chest, he read, _'See? They're going to leave me in a ditch.'_

 

'She was just upset about the bridge,' Edgar wrote back. 'They're not leaving you anywhere.'

 

_'They want to.'_

 

“The fuck you guys doing?” Jimmy asked.

 

“Turn around, Jimmy,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar waited until Jimmy had 'harumph'ed back into his seat before writing his response.

 

'How is this different from every other time they called you an asshole? You guys always do this.'

 

_'They don't trust me, they could just leave me somewhere if Tenna wanted.'_

 

He didn't know how to say, “Actually, yes, I overheard Tenna saying she didn't trust you,” without it making things worse. Johnny was right, technically, though Edgar was sure Tenna would be outvoted regarding leaving Johnny in a ditch if it came down to it. He decided to avoid the issue by offering to help _Johnny_ avoid the issue.

 

'Do you want me to drive instead?'

 

Johnny didn't write a response, he just shook his head when he read what Edgar wrote and hugged the notebook to his chest. Part of a song from their photoshoot echoed in Edgar's head while he watched the others sitting in irritated silence.

 

 

_“I know, I know you tried to change things_  
_I know you tried to change_  
_I know”_

 

 

Edgar rummaged around the floor through the boxes and bags at his feet and found art supplies, extension cords, and an entire bag of orange Halloween candy, but not what he needed.

 

“Jimmy, where did you pack all the first aid shit?”

 

“I thought he was ' _fine'_ ,” Jimmy answered mockingly.

 

“I am!” Johnny yelled as he kicked Jimmy's seat with the injured leg. “Fuck off!”

 

Edgar backed against the window. “Whoa! Hey, I'm trying to help!”

 

Devi yelled over them. “Do I need to separate you guys?! What the fuck?”

 

“We're _fine!_ ” Johnny and Jimmy screamed back in unison.

 

They both sat angrily in their seats for several seconds until Jimmy pointed to the front passenger seat. “It's behind Devi.”

 

“Thanks,” Edgar said flatly. Neither Jimmy nor Johnny would move, so it was up to Edgar to shuffle around a moving van. Devi reached behind her and opened the bag Jimmy had pointed to.

 

“What does he need?” she asked.

 

“Probably just a band-aid. Do we have those little alcohol pads?”

 

“Yes,” Jimmy said, rolling his eyes. “What kind of shit do you think I picked up?”

 

Devi handed Edgar the bandage and the alcohol pad without another word.

 

It had been a long time since he'd felt like an outsider among these people, but now it was like he knew no one but Johnny, and even that had felt questionable when Johnny lashed out at Jimmy's chair. It wasn't as alarming as other things that had happened, and was actually fairly typical of Johnny's interactions with Jimmy, but something about how quickly it had hit that point was unsettling in the wake of his issues with static and intercoms.

 

Edgar offered the supplies to Johnny, who took them almost resentfully and cleaned his knee like he was being forced.

 

“We're even,” Tenna called back.

 

“Us too,” Devi added.

 

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Johnny replied, peeling the back off the bandage. “Anybody else?”

 

Jimmy let out a dismissive puff of air. “We're fine. We're always fine.”

 

Johnny looked up at Edgar and though Edgar wanted to say they were okay, because he was pretty sure there was no reason they weren't, he just shrugged one shoulder. Johnny's angry demeanor vanished and his eyes widened. He gingerly offered the notebook to Edgar, and though Edgar took it, he wasn't sure what he wanted to write in it.

 

Johnny stared expectantly at the blank space under Edgar's hand, but Edgar couldn't make anything come. He put the pen to the paper several times and made a few loose scribbles. Finally, he settled with, 'It's okay. You just scared me,' and passed the book back.

 

Up front, Tenna turned up the radio and said something that made Devi laugh among the bubblegum pop music that filled the van.

 

_'It's just_ _ Jimmy _ _, we do that all the time.'_

 

' ~~It just was~~ I'm worried about you, that's all.'

 

Johnny frowned at the page when Edgar passed it back to him and put the pen to the page several times without actually writing anything. When he finally managed something and passed it back to Edgar, it only read, ' _I'm fine.'_

 

“Okay,” Edgar said aloud.

 

“What?” Jimmy said.

 

“Nothing, sorry.”

 

Jimmy shrugged and asked Tenna to turn up the radio.

 

Edgar sighed, though it was almost involuntary. Outside, the world was getting darker. Though it was a small thing, he'd never seen it darken while moving before, and he wondered if it would look different. Johnny moved closer to him and reached over Edgar's knees for some of the candy Edgar had unleashed while looking for bandaids. He stayed there rather than returning to the other window.  No matter what he was doing, having Johnny next to him felt like he was doing it right.

 

The dark was gradual, just like it was at home, but here it felt like they had a chance of outrunning it, rather than being slowly engulfed. They didn't outrun it, of course, but the feeling was exciting anyway.  Just like watching the stars and focusing on one or two for miles and miles while seeing hints of scenery whiz by.  It was a tiny thing to experience, watching stars from a moving van in the dark, but it was one of the many tiny things that TV had laid out as both normal and universally emotive that he was late to.  It was also a good indication that the sky was real.

 

Or that Pepito and Pals were extremely dedicated to realism.

 

 

 

 

The city snuck up on them. One minute, they were on a long stretch of highway, the next, they rounded a soft bend, and the city emerged before them like they were going to go in by the front door. By the time Tenna realized they were headed in, there were no exits away or out, only choices for places to go within the city. Tenna zeroed in on the one leading straight into the heart, probably because it involved fewer lane changes. Edgar saw Tenna's hands tighten on the wheel at the same moment Devi did.

 

“We're cool, Ten,” she said. “Just drive.”

 

Devi turned the music's volume down as Tenna hunched her shoulders and snorted over the top of the wheel. “Okay, fuckers. We're going in.”

 

The city sprouted around them and cars crawled in on all sides. Edgar held his breath as other lanes slid in next to them and the city loomed overhead. Tenna had never driven this close to other drivers, nor with this many distractions, and Edgar's attention was split between hoping she wouldn't kill them and wanting to take in the view.

 

Other cars were mostly smears of yellow and then red light as they passed the van, but the same could be said for the buildings. Edgar could only guess at the shapes of the buildings based on their glittery outlines against the sky.

 

_“Waiting in a car_  
_Waiting for a ride in the dark”_

 

 

“Okay, guys, some direction would be great,” Tenna said. She may as well have been miles away for all the others reacted.

 

 

“ _The night city grows_ _  
__Look at the horizon glow”_

 

There were bridges in the center of the city, at least four visible at once. The buildings Tenna drove by had brightly lit facades, fountains, and rooftops. Hotels, corporate headquarters, banks, billboards and radio stations all with logos that blazed into the dark.

 

“God,” Johnny breathed the word more than he said it. “Shit actually comes from somewhere, it doesn't just … exist.”

 

_“Waiting in a car_  
_Waiting for a ride in the dark”_

 

“Guys, please, where are we going?”

 

“Something with people,” Jimmy said.

 

“Let me know when you see the sign that says 'People: This Exit',” Tenna snapped back.

 

 

_“Drinking in the lights_  
_Following the neon signs”_

 

People found them. The road abruptly stopped feeling like a highway and began as part of a downtown street four lanes wide all with different directions and limitations hanging above them.

 

“Um,” Tenna said, as cars filled in beside and behind her.

 

Edgar slid off his seat, startling Johnny. “Hang on, hang on.”

 

The lights changed and Tenna began to panic. “Um!”

 

Down on his knees between Devi and Tenna, Edgar watched the signs, the lights, the people, all from the windshield. “It's okay, it's okay, just stay in this lane and do whatever the sign says. We can only turn left here, so just go left. Stay in the lane while you do it.”

 

“Fuck, what if we didn't want to go left?” Jimmy asked.

 

“Then we'd sit here with a turn signal on and hope someone is feeling charitable enough to let us into another lane.  Or that everyone values their cars more than they hate us,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny remained in the back with his nose pressed against the window. “There's a theater down that street! Oh, shit, no, no, you're passing it!”

 

“We're going left down here, Nny!” Tenna yelled. “That is our only option!”

 

“We can check it out when we park,” Devi said.

 

Tenna and Edgar turned to her simultaneously. “Park?”

 

“Uh, yeah, unless you guys meant you wanted to be the kind of traveling band that just rolls down the windows and screams.”

 

“Fucking fuck,” Tenna muttered.

 

“It's okay, we'll find a garage.”

 

Jimmy leaned forward. “You mean a parking garage? Where all the serial killers go to find easy prey to take their cars and wallets?”

 

“Jimmy-” Devi started.

 

“We'll be fine,” Johnny said. “We're invisible, we don't have wallets or a nice car, and you rode all the way down here with a former serial killer and lived to tell about it.”

 

Edgar tried to redirect as gently as possible. “Nny, you --”

 

“Dude, holy shit,” Tenna said, her eyes flicking up to the rear view mirror as she waited behind another red light.

 

Johnny shrugged and looked back out the window.

 

“We'll look at the theater,” she said. “It's gonna be fine.”

 

“That's not –! Nevermind. Just find your dumb garage so we can get out of here.”

 

 

“ _Waiting in a car_ _  
__Waiting for the right time”_

 

 

Tenna looked at Devi and lowered her voice. “What fucking reaction to that did he want?”

 

“ _Tenna_ ,” Devi hissed, teeth clenched.

 

“Don't mind me,” Edgar told them, voice just as low. “I know you don't trust him, I'm just here to direct traffic. Carry on.”

 

“Oh, come on, I don't _not trust_ _him_ ,” Tenna defended, “I just kinda worry he's going to flip out and … do stuff.”

 

Edgar ignored her. “If Nny saw a theater, there's probably a garage nearby.” He turned around. “Jimmy, can you find the money?”

 

Jimmy blinked and his eyes darted around the bags and boxes around his feet. “Uh, the real money? Not the alien kid credit card?”

 

“Yeah, just in case this thing only takes cash...”

 

Tenna slapped the wheel in outrage. “What? You have to pay to park places? That's bullshit!”

 

“I've seen it in a few movies,” Edgar replied.  “Usually before someone murders a blonde woman.”

 

“Uh, shit, okay.”  Jimmy climbed out of his seat and began rustling through the plastic bags strewn around his seat.

 

Edgar pointed to a 'Vacancy' sign jutting out of a tall building on their right.   “Here, right here. You need to get in the other lane and then – WHOA!”

 

As soon as he'd said 'other lane,' Tenna swerved over without looking at anything but the garage entrance.  Edgar fell against Tenna's chair, Jimmy crashed into a pile of plastic bags, and Johnny hit his head on the window all to the sounds of at least ten cars honking and squealing to a stop.

 

“Oh my god, they can see the van!” Tenna cried.

 

“Ten, what the fuck, why weren't you looking?” Edgar pulled himself upright and looked around at the honking chaos.

 

“Fuck you, Mom! They can see the van!” she repeated.

 

“Of course they can!” Devi yelled. “What do you think has kept people from slamming into us?!”

 

Johnny yelled from the back. “Just fucking drive, Tenna, worry about it later!”

 

Tenna swung the van awkwardly between two stopped lanes of traffic and then into the ramp into the garage.

 

“They can see the goddamn van,” Tenna said again.

 

Edgar shook his head and looked back to the others. “Money anyone?”

 

“I think it's in the back,” Jimmy said. “I looked through all these bags.”

 

“It'll take a card. Nny?”

 

Johnny wordlessly tossed the card over Jimmy's seat and it fluttered to the floor almost underneath Devi.

 

They fought with the machine for a while as it repeated the same information over and over and then Devi realized they were meant to pay on their way out. Tenna grabbed the little ticket the machine produced and handed it to Devi as she took them into the garage.

 

Four floors up with no empty spaces and Jimmy was awed by the experience. “This is nuts, we could just go left and up forever.”

 

“Seriously,” Devi said, “how many floors is this? We should have unloaded things at the bottom.”

 

Tenna shrugged. “Then we'll try going all the way up and all the way back down.”

 

“I... guess?”

 

“That's how these work, right?” Tenna glanced at Edgar.

 

“I think so?”

 

It did work that way, much to Edgar's relief.

 

They opted to leave unpacking until they found a suitable place to go, and stepped out onto the streets of the city, where they felt even smaller than they had in the van.

 

Johnny stood on his toes and squinted off into the distance. “Which way did we come from? I want to find that theater.”

 

Edgar motioned behind them. “Uh, this way, I think. But the theater should just be on the next block.”

 

“You think we're going to play in there?” Devi asked.

 

“No, but maybe their lobby or something. Or people outside when a show lets out.”

 

“That _would_ be a lot of people,” Jimmy said.

 

They crossed streets where the walk signals mattered and there were signs in languages they didn't speak unless they were singing. Tenna nearly flung herself on the doorstep of the Star of India when their doors opened, proclaiming she'd never smelled anything more like Heaven in all her life. Jimmy had to be dragged away from staring at passing people.

 

Johnny ran to the glowing marquee of the theater when they found it just one block over.

 

They could see inside through the windows that the place was gilded top to bottom and covered with elaborate sculpting and light fixtures.

 

“That's never gonna be our kinda place,” Johnny said with a laugh. “But I appreciate their dedication to A Look.”

 

Devi tapped one of the posters they had framed outside the main entrance. “They're doing Sweeney Todd,” she said.

 

Johnny's eyes went wide. “Oh, I take it back! Now it's my kind of place. Maybe we can sneak in and see what it looks like...”

 

Jimmy held up his hands. “Wait, hold up, if they're doing Sweeney Todd, the people in there watching it might actually like us.”

 

Tenna high-fived him. “Let's get our shit.”

 

 

It took some maneuvering, but they wrangled a bunch of equipment out of the van and around the block to a very small corner that was either an art piece or an attempt at making a public park but did not do well at being either. Jimmy did some clever things with extension cords and a nearby bistro with an open back door, and the practicalities were sorted.

 

Tenna had brought little in the way of makeup with her for this particular excursion. Johnny was displeased at first. “We can't not be dead, that's the entire point of this. And it's our first time out here!”

 

“Listen, in this light, no one is going to see much makeup and it's already getting late, so too much effort is a waste. We're going super basic on the dead, and heavy on the glitter to catch all these streetlights, cars, and sparkly theater bullshit, you feel me?”

 

Johnny put his hands up. “Okay, I feel you, I feel you. Go forth and glitter.”

 

She coated them and the pavement around them in a liberal helping of fake blood and glitter after giving the each a simplified dead-ish face with drawn on features rather than anything glued on. Frankly, Edgar was glad to be spared all the glue for a while. After one last shake of glitter and a blind squirt of blood which she administered like a particularly fucked up fairy, she gave them a salute.

 

“The rest is in your hands, my loves.”

 

Johnny ran a hand through his hair and a cloud of glitter rained into his face. He sputtered a little and wiped his mouth repeatedly with the side of his hand. Tenna stood off the to side and gave him two enthusiastic thumbs up. He returned with just one from the hand that wasn't trying to clean glitter from his tongue.

 

“Guys, I'm pretty sure I just swallowed glitter; will you do me a favor?”

 

“I'm pretty sure there's no cure for that,” Devi said. “You will have it forever.”

 

“Can you guys do the rain song?”

 

“Oh.”

 

'The rain song' was one of their summer projects. No one had had any real experience with making a song up, no one had known any terminology, but Johnny had been certain they could cobble something together. They cobbled several things together, as it turned out, and the rain song was one of them.  It had been mostly Johnny's project – they were his words and most of the ideas about how it should sound were his – but like all the songs they'd put together, it required everyone to get it off the ground.

 

Jimmy shrugged. “We can try. It's not like anyone will notice if we fuck it up.”

 

“Thanks for your vote of optimism,” Johnny said. “Will you do it? Are we good?”

 

Devi put her hands up. “Whatever you want. Just don't freak out if no one sees us because they don't know the song.”

 

Johnny waved her off. “We don't even know if these people hear like we do, it's fine.'

 

Edgar fiddled with a few notes until he landed on the ones that felt like the song. “I'm ready whenever.”

 

Johnny took a few deep breaths with his eyes closed and then shot Edgar a glance and nodded.

 

The song started a little shaky – no one had been ready for this one – but once they got going, the feeling of it surged through them and the song directed them rather than the other way around.

 

 

“ _it seeps through the ground_

_it creeps through the sky_

_feel it in your bones_

_long before it burns your eyes”_

 

 

This was their first attempt to see if visible people, normal people, whatever they were, would react to songs they couldn't have ever heard before.

 

“ _it hammers through the rooftops_

_it sizzles in the air_

_the bones exposed on those who go_

_they call out, flesh despair”_

 

The hope was present in the performance as much as hope was not a feature of the song.  Edgar let the song take him where it wished, and the others reacted to his enthusiasm, following suit to create a very emphatic version of the song they'd practiced.

 

Or maybe it was a reaction to Johnny's enthusiasm, which was far more likely.

 

“ _it's gonna rain_

_it's gonna burn_

_it's gonna melt_

_it's gonna turn the roads to tar_

_the trees to ash_

_there is no way we're going back”_

 

He'd never seen it or researched it, but Edgar was certain that no one enjoyed singing about the impending doom of everything about him more than Johnny did.

 

The first person to see them was a young woman who gasped as Johnny threat-sang,

 

“ _you won't get far!”_

 

She stared at him, apprehensive, maybe confused, but enjoying it.  Edgar was a veteran of that particular combination of feelings.

 

“ _all that there is left for you_

_is when the rain will get you too”_

 

Edgar thought distantly that he might not look scary at the moment, but the more he tried to concentrate on either his scary acting or his hands the other one would falter. He eventually favored the music part of the performance, but even as his hands poured part of him into a keyboard and he was actively contributing to a performance, the thought of Johnny finding it so easy to be the kind of 'intriguing scary' that drew strangers to him (no matter how relatively visible) wouldn't leave him alone.

 

“ _remember before gray overcast_

_pavement like a mirror_

_lakes of glass and all that's passed_

_all of it replaced with fear”_

 

Johnny had made a song about the rain turning into something that melted people as they tried to escape it, and was so happy to be delivering that message to them. Maybe he wanted to be the rain. Maybe he felt like he was already.

 

“ _acid burns when it hits_

_(pavement reflective)_

_seeping through all attempts to hide, it's_

_(methods ineffective)_

_gonna rain”_

 

 

Another first came in the shape of people who had seen them but had not realized how strange a phenomenon that was and walked on, ignoring them.  It was an odd sensation, being purposefully ignored, rather than it being a function of every day living.  Johnny especially was not pleased by this and his performance got sharper and angrier when someone gave them a glance and then kept walking like they were beggars.  At his angriest, he took a decisive step toward one man who chose to just pass them by and made a performance-appropriate swipe at him.

 

“ _and you won't get far”_

 

The man jumped back in alarm with his arms raised in front of his face. Johnny was so surprised by the reaction he nearly missed the next lines.

 

“ _all that there is left for you_

_is when the rain will get you too”\_

 

“God damn freaks,” the man said as he hurried away, checking over his shoulder.

 

Johnny bowed as the man fled and when he came back up his expression was legible as euphoric even under the dark, makeup, and glitter.

 

Moments later, a pair of women clearly saw them but obviously turned away.  Johnny went after them too, never close enough to touch, but quick enough, strange enough, loud enough, and with enough elegant theatrical intent that it startled them and they scuffled across the street.

 

There were a few people watching, staying, but the people who ran were somehow even more exciting. Scaring people was so much easier than the conversations with real people they'd tried to have in the school.

 

When the song ended, Johnny bowed for the little crowd of a dozen people that had formed around the band. They clapped, and then the majority headed on their way. One woman handed Johnny a dollar as she ducked by toward the parking garage and he blinked at it like he'd never seen money before. He glanced back at the others, bewildered, dollar pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “Uh.”

 

Tenna walked up from the side and snatched it from him. “I'll take care of this,” she said. “You guys play something else before these people jump ship.” She propped up the box they'd dragged all the cords and makeup in and tossed the dollar inside, settling comfortably behind it, cross-legged and smiling.

 

“Someone play something,” Johnny said.

 

“Boy, you are really going to regret not being specific,” Tenna muttered.

 

Jimmy casually fiddled around, seemingly stalling for time, until a tune from kids' television show about rival music groups drifted out.  Edgar laughed and helped him out, and then Devi caught on too.  Johnny looked at them all in dismay.

 

“You guys aren't taking this seriously at all, I'm disowning you.”

 

“I'd turn around and start singing if I were you,” Jimmy said. “Devi's gonna cue you any second.”

 

As promised, Devi sang out the opening bit of the tiny song.

 

“ _I make a prediction_

_just you wait and see:_

_All the things you want_

_the Fates will grant to three!”_

 

Johnny's irritation vanished immediately, like it had so often during their summer sessions.

 

“ _It's destiny_

_the dreams I dream are destined to be_

_I can see_

_the future and I'm satisfied_

_you and me_

_it's destiny_

_Fate is on my side”_

 

Like always, he sang it like he meant it, like he'd chosen it, like he felt it, like the people he'd been before could have killed using glitter and a grin. The look he shot a small group when he hit the line 'you and me' was distinctly threatening. This Johnny wasn't declaring a fated partner, he was forecasting victims.

 

The others joined him for the next part.

 

“ _I share your conviction,”_ from Devi.

 

“ _Same thing goes for me_ ,” from Edgar.

 

“ _All the plans and schemes are more than fantasy!_ ” from everyone, even Tenna perched behind a donation box on the sidewalk.

 

They stayed with him for the rest of the song, which was only another chorus.

 

“ _It's destiny_

_the dreams I dream are destined to be_

_I can see_

_the future and I'm satisfied_

_you and me_

_it's destiny_

_Fate is on my side”_

 

Johnny gave the slightest glance to Edgar, who hoped it was intentional.

 

“ _you and me_

_it's destiny_

_Fate is on my side”_

 

 

 

Johnny laughed when they finished the song. He pointed at Jimmy and said, “I hate you,” but it was the most joy Edgar had ever heard in a declaration of hate.

 

“Do the other one,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar smiled. “It's quick, are you ready?”

 

Johnny nodded. “Yeah, everyone good?”

 

Devi counted them in and they started another of these songs that they felt a little ridiculous for liking. They'd played these and several more during the summer, mostly to annoy Johnny when he was being too serious, but here he was thankfully embracing it.

 

“ _Manipulation_

_is the name of the game_

_manipulation_

_makes other games look tame_

_the goal_

_is control_

_of your soul”_

 

“ _We're playing mind games, mind games_

_stretching your mind till it snaps!_

_We like to play mind games, mind games, mind games_

_makin' the whole thing collapse_

_mind games”_

 

 

'Real' Johnny had freely sung both of them when asked, and even enjoyed them.  Homicides Johnny connected much easier to this one.  It was visible in every movement, every predatory grin to strangers on the street, every breath he took.

 

“ _The stipulation is that I make all the rules  
Intimidation turns the wisest men to fools_

_as you're caught, overwrought, and distraught_

 

_suddenly the world seems out of joint_

_don't you see, baby, that's the point!”_

 

Five or six people in a group startled and Edgar heard them saying, “Did you see that? Where did they come from? Right there, look!”

 

Whatever they were doing was working. It wasn't everyone who passed by, but it was enough that they were stopping other people who would sometimes see them on the influence of their friends.

 

“ _We're playing mind games, mind games_

_Twistin' your head out of shape_

_We like to play mind games, mind games, mind games_

_there's no way to escape_

 

_We like to play mind games, mind games, mind games_

_there's no way to escape_

 

_Mind games!”_

 

On the sidewalk, Tenna grinned and waved at people tossing loose change into her box. “Thanks! Tell your friends what you saw!”

 

They had one more song before patience, the late hour, and the nighttime chill reduced their audience to one awkward girl who was trying to look like she wasn't hoping for another song.

 

Tenna packed up the box and the girl wandered to the corner, waiting for the light to change, but checking over her shoulder rather than watching the light.

 

“We're called The Homicides!” Tenna called after her. “Maybe you'll see us again!”

 

“That was cheery,” Devi said.

 

“Maybe she'll search for us later or something,” Tenna said with a shrug.

 

“And find what?” Edgar asked. “Who knows our names but us, her, and a dozen kids at a high school 50 miles away?”

 

“It seemed like a good idea, okay?” She crossed her arms. “Sheesh.”

 

Johnny stood by himself, staring across the street like a robot waiting for another command. Tenna clapped her hands at him. “Nny, buddy! We're getting the fuck out!”

 

He startled, and turned to look at her, then suddenly looked a little out of breath. “Yeah, okay.”

 

Jimmy squinted as he leaned forward to look across the street. “Is someone over there?”

 

“It's nothing,” Johnny said. “Just spacing out. Let's get this shit back in the van, I guess.”

 

 

On the trip back, they laughed about the cartoon songs, talked about what they'd need to do to keep people interested after the big reveal that they existed, and Tenna complained that she was not doing makeup for performances that lasted less than half an hour ever again.

 

With everything back in the van and some significant chill setting in, they stood in the parking garage's yellow light and really realized where they were.

 

Finally, it was Jimmy who asked the obvious question. “Where do we go now?”

 

“We could just go home,” Devi said. “It actually _doesn't_ take six hours if you're not distracted. We'll probably be back in an hour or so.”

 

“I'm not going back until we do something big enough,” Johnny said.

 

“I actually don't want to go back either,” Tenna told him, “but you should know I would totally leave you here if no one else wanted to stay.”

 

Edgar immediately jumped. “We can't leave people _alone_ out here! What if Nny fell down a manhole or was hit by a bus or something? No one would know, no one would help him!”

 

Johnny put his hands on his hips and sent a disapproving look at Edgar. “A _manhole?_   Will I slip on a banana peel if I leave your sight too?”

 

“I – it was hypothetical. It could have been anyone.”

 

Johnny shook his head, but there was a laugh under his breath.

 

“So we're sleeping in the van, then,” Jimmy said.

 

Devi shrugged. “I guess.”

 

Tenna got them out of the parking garage, actually paid for the parking, and enjoyed city driving far more in the early morning kind of night than the dinner and a movie kind. Edgar took the opportunity to show her signs and lights she hadn't seen in their tiny town, and together they drove the van out of the heart of town and to a less dense area with an empty shopping center parking lot.

 

It was a strange place to be. Even though he'd never been in one of these stores, and thus never seen one full and bustling in real life, he still felt strange seeing it empty. Jimmy trotted over to the store while Tenna offered face cleaning stuff to anyone who wanted it. Edgar made a decent attempt at removing the stitches Tenna had only drawn on tonight, but he couldn't see or care enough to remove everything. Devi sat in the passenger seat with the door open, her legs dangling down to the pavement, trying to use the van's light and mirrors to get rid of the stark white and the bars of black running down her face.

 

Johnny didn't even try.

 

Jimmy returned from the store front and pulled his split shirt around him against the chill. “They open at nine-thirty,” he said. “If people can see the van, we should probably be gone before then, just in case.”

 

Devi looked around her seat as she smeared some paint from her cheek. “Does... someone have a watch or something?”

 

“We'll be up,” Johnny said. “Don't worry about it.”

 

Tenna shrugged at Devi and climbed in to see what she could do about the accommodations for the night.

 

They'd packed the van tightly to come here and never considered people sleeping in it. Assuming a similar arrangement as when they were driving, Edgar and Johnny could be comfortable, but everyone else would have to get creative.

 

Jimmy and Tenna made a pile of things in Jimmy's chair to clear out most of the floor and settled like Tetris pieces around the chairs and boxes that couldn't be moved. Devi elected to stay in the front seat even though Tenna swore up and down there was room for her on the floor. Devi answered her by reclining the chair back as far as it would go.

 

This all left Edgar in what should have been an ideal situation, but instead made him consider asking to be strapped to the roof instead.

 

“I could sleep on the floor too if we move some stuff,” he told Johnny as they sat on their bench seat together. The others were settled in, but were certainly still awake, so Edgar and Johnny were left trying to look as casual as possible while navigating through something weird.

 

Johnny was quiet and started to reach for his notebook. He stopped and sighed, flexing his hands over and over, staring into his gloved palms. “It's okay.”

 

“Are you sure? I really don't mind the floor.”

 

Johnny nodded. “Yeah, it's fine.”

 

As was so often the case for Edgar, what was a romantic ideal on TV was terribly awkward in real life. He tried to tuck himself into the fold of the seat as much as possible and wasn't sure about what direction to face.

 

Johnny only sat in front of him, and once Edgar was settled, Johnny grabbed his notebook.  He made a division after their previous conversation, scribbled something underneath, and handed it to Edgar. The only light was a far off street light at the edge of the parking lot, and it took a few seconds for Edgar's eyes to adjust enough to see what Johnny had put on the page.

 

' _I trust you,'_ it said.

 

Edgar took the offered pen, contorted himself slightly, and wrote back, 'Thanks. I'm sorry. I wanted this to be better.'

 

Johnny smirked at the message when he read it and passed the book back with his reply: _'Romantic bullshit again? :P'_

 

Edgar made a face at him when the book came back. Feeling somewhat absurd, he wrote, 'You don't need to draw faces, I can still see you.'

 

Johnny leaned over just as Edgar finished writing it and drew another face. ' _> :P It's for posterity, asshole.'_

 

Edgar shook his head and Johnny gently bumped his arm. He circled ' _Romantic bullshit again?_ ' and added another question mark.

 

 _Oh_. 'I thought about asking at home but I was afraid to be creepy. Sleeping together looks cute on TV? :('

 

Johnny laughed softly as he read the message and just wrote “ _OK_ ” before taking the book and tucking it under some magazines on the floor. He stretched out on the seat with his back to Edgar. For several frightening seconds, Edgar didn't breathe, afraid even a stray breath on Johnny's skin would be construed as a sexual gesture or a violation. He exhaled as slowly as possible in order to be undetectable, but it was the most strained he'd ever felt while just breathing. He'd never be able to keep it up.

 

He knew he was being ridiculous, he'd just had hopes that sleeping next to Johnny would have been cute, romantic, full of pillows and not quite so in front of everyone and fraught with concern about being a _breather_.

 

Johnny's shoulders relaxed, though until they did Edgar hadn't realized they were tense, and Johnny slid slightly backward. They both jump-twitched when Johnny's back touched Edgar's chest and Edgar instantly wished for a swift death at the hands of a malfunctioning folding seat.

 

“Sorry,” he whispered.

 

“It's okay,” Johnny answered. “You didn't – I'm fine, just... Just sleep.” He exhaled slowly, like his whole body was deflating, and he settled, slowly, against Edgar. Edgar focused on 'acting natural' and breathing 'normally' and forgetting that his arms were mobile parts of his body.

 

Unfortunately, Johnny was pretty distracting so close. It wasn't like they hadn't been close before – Edgar had kissed Johnny a few times, after all, and as far as he knew that was the closest anyone had ever been! – but having him this close for so _long_ was a little maddening. The bones in his back, his hair, his smell, his breathing, it was all so –! So _present._ Even though this was not the happy hugging and contented sleeping among piles of pillows in a over-fluffed bed that Edgar had imagined, it was still Johnny, it was still being near him, it was still Johnny being dizzyingly real and intoxicatingly close.  Edgar may have breathed funny once or twice, and when his arm brushed Johnny's as he shifted his weight he cursed that he even _had_ an arm, but Johnny trusted him and that had yet to make anything worse.

 

 

 

 

Edgar woke up when the glare from the sun in the window was aggressively focused on his face. When he opened his eyes, he was alone on the seat. The others, minus Johnny, were all still in the van, asleep on the floor. Even Devi, who had insisted on the front seat when they went to sleep, was tangled up with Jimmy and Tenna. Edgar sat up and then caught sight of Johnny outside the van, leaning against the door.

 

Edgar tapped on the window and Johnny turned. Early morning light was a strange match for half-slept-in murder makeup, but the undertones of blue in Johnny's hair and the remnants of Tenna's glitterpocalypse were well-served by it. Johnny smiled and tilted his head as he leaned away from the door, gesturing Edgar outside.

 

He had to crawl over the others and he was certain the door would make too much noise, but the other three stayed asleep through Edgar's uncoordinated exit. Johnny helped Edgar close the door gently from the outside and then Edgar joined him in leaning against the van.

 

“Morning,” Edgar said.

 

“It's a weird morning.”

 

“Yeah.” There were few cars on the stretch of highway they could see, and no one at all in the parking lot they'd spent the night in. What had looked abandoned and safe last night now looked bright, open, exposed. The feeling was new – both in that Edgar had never seen a sight like this before and that it felt as though Johnny had fabricated the world fifteen minutes before Edgar had opened his eyes.

 

“Did you sleep okay?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny shrugged and watched one silver car zip by on the road in front of them. “No.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“It's nothing personal. Better you than anyone else.”

 

“Yeah, I'd hope so.”

 

Johnny laughed. “You're my only 'exceeds platonic' nap partner, fear not.”

 

“Oh, good, that's still what this is?”

 

“Exceeding platonic? Sure, as long as you enjoy me ruining every romantic thing you've ever seen on TV.”

 

“It's... interesting to re-contextualize it.”

 

“Re-contextualizing, really? You might want to work on your persuasiveness.”

 

Edgar made a face and rolled his eyes. “Fuck you, you'd say shit exactly like that.”

 

Johnny grinned at him. “I would.” The grin faded and Johnny's gaze flicked to the star bracelet on his wrist. “I'm serious, though. I warned you at the beginning.”

 

“I know. I'm perfectly happy to let you ruin romantic TV bullshit. I just don't exactly know what it's okay to replace it with. I don't speak 'Romantic Nny Bullshit' yet.”

 

“Um.” Johnny raised and eyebrow and looked Edgar over head to toe once. “You stole keys for me, you got Dib off my back without me even having to ask, you are still here after all this head stuff, you let Tenna cover you in stitches, and you _lie_ for me. You're fucking _fluent_.”

 

Out of context, this was not an admirable list. It was probably not a great list even _in_ context, yet there was such a surge a pride in Edgar's chest when Johnny rattled it off. “Does it escalate? Am I going to need to pull a Tenna and steal you a car in order to stay in your favor?”

 

“No, I don't think I'm an expensive car kind of girl. And you've already given me a house.” Johnny drummed his fingers on his jaw. “How do you feel about pulling a jewelry heist? With lasers. I'd be really into jewelry you got while dodging lasers. And then you wouldn't have to spend two hours trying to not breathe.”

 

“Oh, god.”

 

“It's okay. I kind of appreciated the effort. Don't strain yourself next time, though, okay?”

 

“God, you could have _told_ me, I –” Edgar's eyebrows shot up. “Next time?”

 

“You think that was the last time we'll all sleep in this van? You think I am _ever_ going to sleep on the floor? You think I am ever letting anyone _else_ awkwardly breathe on me?” He shoved Edgar gently with his shoulder.

 

“I look forward to it, then.” Edgar returned the shove. “Just, I think next time I want some sort of road map.”

 

Johnny squinted for a few seconds like Edgar was a particularly curious puzzle and then his eyes went wide. “Oh! Okay, yeah, this is easy, I know this one.” He poked his pointer fingers into his hips once. “So if this is the equator then South America,” he flipped his wrists and pointed from his belt to the ground and back, “is no. Greenland and shit,” he gestured from the belt upwards, “is... okay.”

 

“God, this is not what I – the road map was a metaphor. I wasn't... fuck.”

 

Johnny laughed. “You were going to ask this shit anyway.   Just warn me before you set out for the New World or whatever.”

 

“O...kay?”  This somehow felt less clear than before.

 

“I'd prefer this kind of thing not get excessive in front of everyone.  It's not like this is some secret or anything, but it's... I'd rather it be mostly private. So just...”

 

“It's okay, it's okay. That I get. Minimal around people I can do.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“...What about _not_ around people?” No matter how many times Edgar repeated it in his head, it still sounded creepy, but Johnny mercifully chose not to take it that way.

 

“Ah.” Johnny snapped the bracelet on his wrist. “We'll have to work that out when the situation demands it.”

 

“That works for me.”

 

Johnny grinned. “Good, it's gonna have to. Not that we'll be away from people for a while.”

 

The sunlight was almost the whole way across the parking lot. Things still looked new and crisp. It never looked this pleasant on TV, even though Edgar was certain they'd tried to make it that way. He'd found mornings like this beautiful before he'd ever physically experienced one because the TV had played certain music or applied certain filters. It had taught him to look forward to the idea of sleeping wrapped around someone, it had taught him to want to kiss, even. _How would anyone even come up with that on their own?_

 

“You know what I just thought of?”

 

Johnny tilted his head back against the van. “What?”

 

“I don't know if Romantic Edgar Bullshit is any different from Romantic TV Bullshit. Everything I can think of that I might like perfectly lines up with TV.”

 

Johnny turned his head, his cheek nearly on the glass on the window. He said nothing, but he watched Edgar intently.

 

“That's it, I guess,” Edgar said. “I just thought that I have no idea what I'd like or what I'd want if my house hadn't generated a television.”

 

“You like _me_ , and, as is so often pointed out, I'm not on television.”

 

“No, you're not.” That hadn't been exactly what he meant, though maybe there was something to it. “I'm not complaining at all! I'm... really fucking happy about all this, about you. About them, even.” He nodded his head back, toward the others still asleep in the van. “I just wish I'd had as little outside influence as you guys did. I'm not _sure_ of anything at the moment.”

 

“It's dangerous to be sure. You're okay.”

 

“You're sure you don't belong in a gender box, aren't you?”

 

Johnny's eyes widened just a bit, like the question had been laced with static. “Ah. Okay. I get it.”

 

“I feel like the very special 'growing up' episode of a shitty television show and I hate that I have that as a reference point.”

 

“If it's any consolation, I would have made the same comparison.”

 

“It might be, a little. I just hope I'm _me_ , and not...” He glanced behind him, where multiple faces were distorted across the window. “Not anyone else. Or some kind of science project, like the house was a petri dish and I'm some kind of … third generation slime mold. I worry if I change anything, if I turn out to be as much like television as I thought and I try to undo it, that I might not even be the me I'm used to anymore. Maybe I won't be me at all. And what if I don't even like non-TV Edgar? What if _you_ don't?”

 

Johnny looked down at his hands and spun the star bracelet around his wrist. “I had a really similar conversation with Devi once.”

 

“Really?”

 

“It wasn't _this_ Devi,” Johnny admitted. “But I was afraid of the same thing: if losing something that has defined you until a certain point made you stop being that person. She didn't take my question as seriously as I think I wanted, so it didn't last long, but I think – assuming you don't have some kind of mental parasite – that the person wondering all this is really you, and they aren't going away no matter what else changes. I think it's a sign of paying attention to wonder about this shit. It means you aren't complacent. Simple people don't worry about where they came from.”

 

“It's hard to imagine not being 'the TV one'. I don't even know how I'd stop, I just... wonder if I want to.”

 

“You're not the TV one. You do... _plenty_ that I have never seen on TV.”

 

“You sound like you're struggling to say that.”

 

“Not because it's a lie.”

 

“Then what – ”

 

“You have sincerity that I don't think is found on television except in parody and you are a nicer person than should be real. Even if you learned to be nice from television, it's fucking astonishing that you chose that, because the percentage of assholes to emulate is far higher, and they're frankly usually treated as more interesting people.”

 

“So I shouldn't try to be the harder, meaner Edgar?”

 

“No. I can be an asshole enough for both of us.” Johnny grinned. “This is why this works. You are supernaturally kind, and I have everyone driving around in broken van dressed up as dead people because of my head issues. Either of us paired with anyone else would upset some kind of cosmic balance.”

 

“This is the real reason why you refused Jimmy all that time?”

 

“Oh, yes. For the good of humanity. That is definitely me. Asshole with a heart of gold.”

 

“Would you mind if I changed?”

 

“I'm assuming you don't mean your clothes.”

 

“Uh, no.”

 

“Do you think you can?”

 

The light on the cars and buildings around them had slipped into a bright orange. “I think so?”

 

Johnny's shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. “I guess what I mean is: What do you think that means? Because you can't stop having _been_ the TV one. You're never going to not to know the things TV taught you, good or bad.”

 

“So what, that's it? I'm just stuck?”

 

“No. Just that you can't just stop knowing that stuff, even if you fake it to the rest of us. It's in there. You can do other shit, though. You can control what you do with it or what you don't. You're probably just in for a weird transition period of feeling lost or like you don't have anything to define you. You'll probably find the new thing you think defines you when you forget to focus on finding it.”

 

“I see.”

 

“And I wouldn't mind.”

 

There were a few more cars on the roads now. “At least there's that.”

 

Johnny laughed and picked a flake of polish from his thumbnail. “You don't remember that, do you? All that shit I just said to you.”

 

“No?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “You said all that to me once. It was just about murder and not TV.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yeah. Come on. We have to get out of here.” He knocked on the van door and there was an almost immediate uproar from inside.

 

When Johnny slid the door open, Jimmy was in the middle of defending himself from Devi while they both sat on opposite sides of Tenna. “I was _asleep_ , it wasn't like I was _trying!”_

 

“Wow, what'd we miss?” Johnny asked.

 

Tenna looked up at them from the floor where she was still lying on her back, one arm on her stomach, the other behind her head. “I'm trying to come up with a good name for it.”

 

Johnny leaned away. “Do I not want the rest of this information?”

 

“I feel like 'The Boob Incident' is too long,” Tenna continued.

 

“No, no I do not,” Johnny said.

 

“It needs a snappy title, I think.”

 

“It doesn't need a _title_ ,” Jimmy shrieked. He lightly kicked Tenna with one socked foot. “It was an _accident._ ”

 

 _“Boobcident!”_ Tenna declared.

 

Johnny climbed into the back and put his headphones on, but Edgar was willing to entertain the Boobcident.

 

“What happened?”

 

Devi glared from the passenger seat as she put her hair in a pony tail. “I woke up with his hand on my chest.”

 

“An _accident,”_ Jimmy repeated.

 

Edgar titled his head. “Was that... on Devi's chest but draped entirely over Tenna?”

 

Jimmy threw his arms up and started emptying his seat of all the stuff that had been on the floor. “I guess!”

 

“Just curious.” Edgar ducked into the back with Johnny as Tenna peeled herself from the floor.

 

Tenna patted Jimmy's shoulder. “It's okay, dude. We've all done it.”

 

“Have we?” Edgar asked.

 

Tenna laughed and jumped out of the van to shut the main door. She reappeared in the driver's seat. “Soooo, where are we going?”

 

“A bathroom,” Devi said. “I need to wash at least twenty-four hours off of myself.”

 

Jimmy tossed his head with an irritated grunt and flopped into his chair, arms crossed.

 

Tenna pulled out of the parking lot to find a bathroom they could use and Edgar, given even a few minutes of silence, considered change.

 

 

 

 

Their first planned attempt to perform was a park, which seemed full enough when they began, but fizzled out into nothing but some stray kids seeing them.

 

“This isn't the right kind of place for us anyway,” Johnny said after they'd exhausted their efforts there. “We need something a bit more industrial, I think. This is too pleasant picnic afternoon for us.”

 

“There's a college here, right?” Tenna asked. “Can we do something there? I hear college kids love any old kinda shit.”

 

Edgar looked out over the trees and up at the campus' central building – a tall monolith of a thing far larger than anything around it. “You know what's weird? We should _be_ college kids. If we'd been normal, we could have all just started.”

 

Johnny put his hands on his hips. “Do I detect regret and or wistfulness?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Only a little. It doesn't make a difference how I feel about it, anyway. This is what we've got.”

 

Johnny smiled at him. There were no college kids who had that, so Edgar was doing okay.

 

 

 

The school had a fancy architectural building near the dorms that had a carved amphitheater off to one side. When Johnny stood at the center, his voice ricocheted around the circle and echoed back around to him. He was delighted with the space, jumping up and down and clapping in excitement when he heard the sound, and had Tenna run their extremely plentiful extension cords from the inside of the building so they could try performing there.

 

When a history class settled in the grass next to the amphitheater, Johnny projected everything he had at them. He acted as though they could see him or like he was preparing to assault them with lyrics. The effort Johnny put forth inspired it in the others, whatever it was, and finally, on a final significant chorus, the entire class jumped, startled, alarmed, maybe a little afraid, and _seeing them_.

 

“When did you guys get there?” One awe-struck student asked.

 

“We've always been here,” Johnny told him. “And we're here all week.”

 

 

 

“A _week_?” Devi hissed an hour later as they packed up their things after entertaining the history class and assorted stragglers. “Where do you propose we sleep?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “In the van again. In the park. A motel if we report back to Dib later that it was haunted and was for science. It'll be fine. And if we're not here a week, who's going to notice? One history class?”

 

“It had better be more than that,” Tenna grumbled. “I'm not gonna keep applying all these dead ass faces to you guys so twenty people can see them for fifteen minutes. We do not have a magic supply of this shit.”

 

“Then we find somewhere to go bigger next,” Johnny said, undeterred.

 

The amphitheater resulted in one post made on the school's message boards, right next to ads for exorcisms of dorms and possible sightings of the undead.

 

After seeing advertisements for rides to the next big sports event, they played in the parking garage near the stadium. The music crashed unpredictably through the columns and cars around them and probably sounded awful, but Johnny sold it, and Edgar got outside confirmation that he wasn't the only one who felt that way. Johnny smiled wickedly at anyone who saw him, and at some who did not, and the people who saw him were either captivated and rooted to the spot, or so afraid they ran. Either result made Johnny laugh in a way that boiled into everything he sang. The 'venues' he sang in were not grand or immersive experiences, but Johnny was. There were times Edgar was proud of him and scared in equal measure and he found the combination intoxicating.

 

It turned out Edgar was not alone in that feeling either. The next day, they were mentioned in the police blotter and the “Eyes on the Undead” section's coverage of the game. The online version of the article Jimmy found while they browsed in the library computer lab had a comments section filled with people who'd been in the garage.

 

While a few comments were complaints (“i didn't get it becuz it wasnt sports,” “there wuz more zombies last time we had a game”), “Tess R” claimed to have been one of the people Johnny grinned at, and she posted her phone number, asking him to get in touch.

 

“Aww, look,” Tenna cooed at the screen as she tapped the woman's name, “Baby's first fangirl.”

 

“I should call her from a payphone to tell her I'm spoken for.”

 

“Please don't,” Edgar said. “She could be some kind of stalker.”

 

The others laughed at him, and he really couldn't blame them. They would be the hardest people on Earth to stalk.

 

“Guys, I'm gonna make us a blog,” Jimmy announced suddenly.

 

Edgar rubbed his ear, certain he'd misheard. “You're going to what?”

 

“I'm gonna make us a blog. Then people don't have to leave creepy phone numbers and we can leave some trace for people to find us. That girl will have something to find when she searches for our name. We can put pictures and hints about where we're going and lyrics and fancy bios and stuff.” As he spoke, he was registering the name 'thehomicides' on some website. “We're going to need a header, and some other stuff. You guys get on the other computers, we can make stuff and write an intro.”

 

Devi crossed her arms. “Really? This is what we're doing?”

 

Johnny shrugged and pulled out a chair in front of another monitor. “Hey, if you want to be visible, you scream into the void of the internet, right?”

 

“I'm gonna follow us,” Tenna chirped.

 

Jimmy leaned around his monitor. “You have one of these?”

 

“Yeah, I made one at the school. Alas, poor blog, neglected all this time... I used to write about the shit we did everyday. I had someone follow me and tell me they were enjoying the story I made up about the half-visible girl, did I tell you guys that? They said it was a good metaphor.”

 

“We like you even if you are a metaphor,” Johnny told her.

 

“Okay,” Jimmy said, “the password just became 'metaphor.' No one post anything until I get the intro stuff set up.”

 

Edgar didn't have any useful computer skills, though he could get around just fine.  Jimmy just didn't need him to make a header or pick colors or provide photos. Edgar provided his own 'bio' and then had little else to contribute, so he found himself looking at a game of solitaire.

 

“How would you guys describe us?” Jimmy asked, typing furiously.

 

“Friends?” Edgar ventured.

 

“You're fucking adorable,” Tenna said.

 

Jimmy shook his head. “No, no, the band.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “A collection of victims.”

 

“A coping mechanism,” Devi said forcefully, glaring at Johnny.

 

“Mostly invisible,” Tenna said.

 

Jimmy frowned at his screen. “Um, okay. Anything else? I'm thinking like, 'The Homicides...' and then you fill in the blank.”

 

“The Homicides don't like you,” Johnny said.

 

Jimmy sneered. “Ha.”

 

“Generic 'you', not _you_ you.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Taste like chicken,” Tenna said.

 

“All of us?” Edgar asked.

 

“Definitely.” She nodded emphatically. “You especially.”

 

She was probably kidding, but Edgar now had to consider the unsettling notion that Tenna had licked him at some point without his knowledge.

 

“Hey!” Jimmy shouted suddenly.

 

Johnny leaned back in his seat, cackling.

 

Jimmy yelled again and the others all began typing furiously. Edgar glanced at Johnny's screen and found that everyone else had been making posts poking at each other on Jimmy's attempt at a spooky band blog.  Edgar had been the only one to listen to Jimmy's request to wait.

 

The blog seemed a little vague when he looked at it to witness the posted argument. “So, isn't the point of this to get people to find us and see us?”

 

“Yeah,” Jimmy answered, only mildly distracted by whatever he was typing. “But the people paying attention to us right now are Dib's Bigfoot people, judging by where we ended up in the paper. They don't like straightforward shit.”

 

Devi leaned back in surprise. “Are you – are you _marketing us to a target audience?_ ”

 

Tenna grinned at Jimmy and looked ready to jump in his lap. “Dude. _Dude._ Okay, I take back my post, this is awesome.”

 

Jimmy beamed proudly. “So you guys will help me post stuff and answer questions?”

 

Johnny frowned. “Questions?”

 

“Yeah, from people who look at the blog.” He shrugged somewhat sheepishly. “Fans or whatever.”

 

“Fans from Dib's Bigfoot People?” Edgar asked.

 

“Oh,” Devi said. “When you put it like that, I'm not answering anything.”

 

“Come on, it's fun,” Jimmy whined. “God, you're always a buzzkill about everything!”

 

Johnny reclined in his chair and shut his eyes. “It's not a big deal Devi, it's not like this thing is going to matter.”

 

Jimmy frowned at him. “I'm gonna _make_ it matter.”

 

“Okay,” Johnny said. “Impress me.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've mentioned before that the town the Homicides are from is essentially my own, with some small variations, so their first experiences leaving it are based on my first memories of driving into Pittsburgh so that might as well be the city they visit. The first SWAN started being written in Pittsburgh, too, so it's a comfortable place for it to be.
> 
> The 'weird historical cult village' is a thing. My dad once told my brother and I we were going to the toy store and then took us a to a weird historical cult village instead. 
> 
> I wrote songs for the Homicides this time around, instead of them having them a weird cover band. I never intended for them to be that, I just didn't feel like I could write songs. I made vague references to them having a few original things before, but never showed any. I feel uniquely weird writing them, though. Firstly, just because they're meant to come from the people in the band, so I feel like I'm making my words into theirs even more than usual by doing this. And that's because, secondly, this feels like poetry. 
> 
>  I have this particular discomfort with poetry in that I feel like all poetry is like an underwear drawer. I'm glad you guys have yours and I have mine, but I don't want to be acquainted with anyone else's, and I'm not into displaying mine either. I say this will full knowledge that some people have really nice underwear/are great poets, but poetry gives me the heebiejeebies. I feel similarly uncomfortable at the idea of making any, so putting up what is essentially poetry because I can't give you a real melody to go with it is really weird feeling. As with lots of things about the Homicides lately, though, it doesn't feel as uncomfortable as I know it once would have. As a side note, this song may or may not have been put together because I played acid rain in a school play when I was in kindergarten.
> 
> While we're talking about songs, anyone familiar with the history of SWAN knows it started because of a flyer featuring Jem and the Holograms, and the songs 'Destiny' and 'Mind Games' are from the show, though they aren't sung by Jem, but the Stingers. The Stingers are weird, off putting, manipulative people who played on the streets to get started and seem to take a unique joy in fucking up other people, so I felt they were the ones to steal music from for the Homicides. There are a few Jem songs that I think this group could actually sing, but since so much of her stuff is about love, most of it is out. You will never see the Homicides sing a love song. 
> 
> Edgar's big stuff here is some stuff I think about a lot. He considers that he'd never have learned to want certain things unless he'd seen them on TV. I think, similarly, that I've never seen a marriage proposal in real life, but I know exactly what one is 'supposed' to look like because I've seen it 7,000 times in movies and TV. His concern about what he'd be without his TV-ness (and Nny's response to it) is somewhat rooted in the experience I had at 17 or 18 when I realized I was no longer an anime fan. Which sounds ridiculous and trivial, but I was shocked to discover that I had hinged a huge portion of my identity on that, and I was deeply preoccupied with what I was or what I'd call myself when I realized that label no longer fit. Like Nny tells Edgar, it was a weird transition period of feeling lost, and then I found other things that I called my identity after I realized I'd stopped looking around for it.
> 
> Songs in order of appearance, are:   
> one line of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" - Gordon Lightfoot  
> two lines of "Leaving Tonight" - The Birthday Massacre  
> one line of "Exquisite Dead Guy" - They Might Be Giants  
> "Dead Disco" - Metric  
> "Midnight City" - M83  
> 'rain' which I wrote for The Homicides  
> "Destiny" and "Mind Games" by The Stingers from Jem
> 
> incidentally, thehomicides.tumblr.com If you are looking at this long after I publish this (like a few months or more beyond November 2016), then that blog will most likely contain spoilers. Just a heads up. But it is interact-able - you can ask the Homicides things and they might answer. Keep in mind they're blogging as the Homicides and not as the people you're following in this story, so they're not going to answer questions about things that happened to them privately. You are in their universe on the very outside looking in. You are Dib's Bigfoot People. They will also post observations, 'photos', and whatever else they/I think is amusing. It will follow through the story, so you should see things referenced here that are on the blog, and things on the blog referenced in the story. It won't matter which you see first, so you can follow them safely if you're concerned about spoiling yourself for some reason. 
> 
> I'll also use that blog to host the full text of their songs, both sung and inner. This is all the plan, anyway.


	21. not the only one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An interview, motel rooms, a stage.

Jimmy's blog was sporadically updated, so it would be a while before it impressed Johnny, but this didn't diminish Jimmy's determination to use it. He had limited opportunity along with limited time at each opportunity, and he complained about it often.

 

“If I had a way to do this on the road, this would be better.”

 

“No one is stopping you from putting a Pringles can on the roof of the van like you did on your trailer,” Johnny told him.

 

“That's not how it works and you know it. The internet is not inside a Pringles can, there has to be something there first.”

 

Johnny shrugged and looked back out the window.

 

As it was, the blog contained a few cryptic posts, one of Devi's pictures of Johnny on the side of the road(which they both wanted taken down), and some copies of text from 'news' about the band being odd or disruptive to some visible people's daily life. (Johnny hadn't meant to make the Freezie machine explode to a degree that it closed the store and alerted police, but he took such delight in it that Jimmy read every police blotter in every news paper in town until he found one that mentioned it.)

 

In the meantime, they concentrated on making as much of a fuss as five invisible people could. Jimmy collected the blips and mentions from every corner of every local newspaper and treasured them like badges whether he posted them or not. They were rarely more than a mention of a disturbance or interruption, but Jimmy kept them like he intended to frame them regardless.

 

“One of Dib's people has to be doing the same thing,” he explained one day when Johnny caught him leafing through the collection. “And then they're going to see this weird phenomenon going on all around the area, so they'll come investigate. Maybe they'll do that thing with a map and thumbtacks. You know, with the photos and red string.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “Oh, _good_ , I've always wanted to be the subject of someone _else's_ psychotic break.”

 

“I volunteer,” Edgar said. “I've always wanted one of those maps.”

 

Johnny shoved him. “You're already half way to being one of Dib's people anyway, you loser.”

 

“All the better reason for it to be me. And you seem like the appropriate subject matter. I think we've got something here.”

 

Johnny laughed at the same time that Jimmy groaned loudly.

 

“Jesus,” Jimmy said, “can you guys not turn that off, or what?”

 

Edgar looked at Johnny, who looked just as baffled as Edgar was.

 

Johnny tilted his head at Jimmy. “What?”

 

Devi sighed from the front. “The flirting.”

 

“We weren't –“ Johnny glanced back and forth between her and Edgar. “We were just talking. Like people do. Using mouth words.”

 

Edgar snickered into his magazine and Johnny poked at him. “What, what now?”

 

“Mouth words? Don't worry, fellow humans, I'm totally normal? I eat food and everything?”

 

Johnny grinned at him. “This is where you break out your red string, Agent V. You'll never take me alive, and the armada is coming.”

 

“Not if my psychotic break can help it.”

 

Jimmy threw his arms up. “Come _on_! Ten, can you turn up the radio?”

 

Between their stolen show attempts, they were crammed into the van like this. Despite loving that he got to stay so close to Johnny, Edgar's back ached from the sleeping arrangement and he longed to be able to stretch out on a real bed with Johnny instead of the back seat.

 

The others were just as tired and everyone had something that got to them in particular. Johnny wanted more space and alone time, Tenna missed living with a washing machine, Devi wanted food that wasn't stolen from the gas station or from a drive thru, and Jimmy was always cold.

 

While staring out a window with Johnny close by, Edgar wondered if they'd last long enough to attract any real attention before they just got too hungry and whiny and went home.

 

They'd played outside a hotel hosting a comic convention and while they were all pleased to be seen, they were less excited about being poked or asked who they were dressed up as.

 

Johnny reflexively scratched someone who got too close to him and they'd left shortly after they heard the word 'bleeding' thanks to Tenna's expert distraction tactics.

 

So now it was just them and the van. Jimmy softly hummed the last song they'd performed and Devi and Tenna always kept the radio on very clear stations after Johnny's experience with static, but the atmosphere in the van still felt serene and silent.

 

Until Johnny's phone rang, shattering the calm relative silence. It felt like months since Edgar had even heard the ringtone. If Johnny didn't occasionally look for somewhere to charge it, he would have thought Johnny hadn't brought the phone with him at all.

 

“Hi, Dib,” Johnny answered blandly.

 

The others watched him listen to the muffled tinny sound in the phone, even Tenna, who kept glancing into the rear-view mirror.

 

After a brief pause, Johnny said, “He's unavailable at the moment, can I take a message?”

 

“--ock it off, Johnny,” Dib's grainy voice said as Johnny booped him onto speaker.

 

“He wants to talk to you,” Johnny said, passing the phone to Edgar.

 

Edgar took the phone. “Hi?”

 

“Good, there you are. Listen, I'll try to be quick. I've been getting some reports about undead music and strange appearances as a footnote in all these reports from the forum and--”

 

Johnny snickered against the window as he watched the landscape zip by behind him.

 

Edgar brought the phone closer to his ear. “Reports? Of _us_?”

 

“Unless you think this is someone else.”

 

Though it was a bit garbled, out of the tiny phone leaked a familiar sound that was nearly drowned out by the gasps it caused.

 

“ _all that there is left for you_

_is when the rain will get you too”_

 

 

“Someone recorded us?” Devi whispered.

 

Edgar made eye contact with Tenna in the mirror. “What does this sound like to someone who can't see us?” he asked.

 

She shook her head and looked back to the road.

 

“So if this is not you guys and there are some other musical zombies out there, you should tell me, because in that case you have been holding out on me and I will be rethinking this partnership.”

 

Johnny settled into a comfortable reclining position on the seat, his head against the window and his feet braced against Edgar's leg. “I didn't know we were partners,” he said.

 

“I'm not talking to you, Johnny,” Dib snapped. “Though you're involved, I suppose.”

 

Johnny laughed dramatically. “Ha! You _suppose?_ This shit was _my_ idea, and those are _my_ words, not to mention _my_ fucking voice in that recording!”

 

“Hey, Captain Douchebag, those are our instruments on the recording too,” Devi called back.

 

“I'm not here to listen to this,” Dib said, mercifully cutting the argument short. “I'm calling because you owe me an interview, and now seems like the best time.”

 

Johnny looked from the phone to Edgar. “We _what?”_

 

“I... may have agreed to this in exchange for things.”

 

“For all of us?”

 

Edgar winced. “Originally, it was just me, I think.”

 

“You are using my funds and you only have a van because of me,” Dib said. “I think you can indulge one interview.”

 

Jimmy hooked his chin over the top of his seat. “Wow, we're gonna be clickbait.”

 

“Absolutely not!” Dib shrieked. “This is legitimate! I have people who want to know what is happening, I have the recording, I have your images, I have all the reports! There is nothing bait about it! I'll just need you all to get to a computer.”

 

Johnny rolled his eyes and continued to watch the scenery beyond the window. “Yeah, I'll just whip out the laptop we brought from Edgar's basement.”

 

There was a static-ridden silence before Edgar had to clarify. “He's being sarcastic. We don't have one.”

 

“Someone is updating that little blog of yours.”

 

Jimmy jumped out of his seat and his arm shot up like kids' in a school movie, slamming his knuckles on the roof. “I am!”

 

“Sit the fuck down!” Tenna yelled. “I am goddamn driving!”

 

“How are you doing it?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Libraries and stuff.”

 

“Next time you run into a library – or _stuff_ – contact me. We can make some arrangements.”

 

“That sounds shady as fuck,” Tenna said. “Is it shady as fuck? Are you sucking our souls out through the screens? Just tell me now, I gotta know.”

 

“What is she saying?” Dib asked.

 

“She said you sound shady as fuck,” Edgar repeated. “I'd agree with her if I didn't already promise I'd do this. Hell, I think I do anyway.”

 

“Look, you guys want people to see you, I'm going to help you. You give me my interview for my site, I put you up in front of all my followers. I solve their mystery, you get an audience, and we both get what we want. I'll throw in some technology for the blog kid if you all take it seriously.”

 

“And you'll mail this 'technology' to a moving van,” Johnny mumbled against the window. “Send a Pringles can while you're at it.”

 

“Don't worry about how he'll get it. The network is larger than you think.”

 

“So comforting!” Tenna chirped. “I can totally see why you guys trusted him with fixing the several ton machine I'm driving!”

 

“We're fine,” Edgar told her.

 

“We are,” Dib agreed, though he likely hadn't heard Tenna. “Call me when you have an internet connection. Anytime.”

 

“We will,” Edgar said.

 

“Excellent. Agent Mothman out.”

 

“Uh, bye?”

 

Edgar handed the phone back to Johnny when it fell silent. “Do you think he expects me to have a weird Agent name? I don't remember agreeing to that part.”

 

“That guy is weird as hell,” Jimmy said.

 

“Jimmy just called someone else weird,” Devi cooed, clapping her hands lightly. “Do we have a calendar? I want to write this down.”

 

“Hey! I'm not _nearly_ as weird as that guy,” Jimmy protested.

 

“It's not a judgment of you against him,” Devi said, rifling through the bags at her feet. “It is just fact that _you_ called this kid weird and it is hilarious.”

 

“We really gonna call him?” Tenna asked.

 

“Yeah,” Edgar said. He shook his leg a little to jostle Johnny. “I promised, and I think it'll help.”

 

“Noted,” Johnny said distantly.

 

 

 

As promised, when they were next at a library, Edgar used Johnny's phone to call Dib. They were fresh from performing on the outskirts of a late autumn festival and had purchased a dozen donuts from a coffee shop drive thru, six of which Tenna had no shame in sampling and then returning to the box. They stood clustered around a single computer with a flickery monitor while Jimmy logged into the blog. Dib's voice clanged strangely in a place with such high ceilings.

 

“Great, let's just get you online. Give me to whoever is doing your blog.”

 

Edgar shrugged and handed the phone to Jimmy, who tried to smush it between his face and shoulder before realizing there was a speaker button.

 

“Hi, which one are you again?” Dib asked.

 

“Jimmy.”

 

“Right. Okay, Jimmy, I'm going to give you some instructions...”

 

Dib led Jimmy through several convoluted and seemingly unrelated steps that resulted in Dib's slightly grainy face appearing on the screen.

 

“This should work,” Dib said. “I've got your location, you'll have your technology if this interview goes well.”

 

“You just said we had to _do_ it,” Johnny said, mouth half-full of donut.

 

“I said you'd get your tech if you took it seriously.”

 

“Good luck with that,” Johnny said.

 

“Yeah, I'm interviewing a bunch of fake dead kids eating donuts,” Dib said to himself, fully taking in the scene.

 

“We're not kids,” Jimmy told him.

 

“Kids or not, I need you all to sit so I can see everyone in the picture. Can I get Johnny in the front?”

 

Devi frowned. “Because he sings.”

 

“He's the most memorable,” Dib answered. “It doesn't matter to me, but everyone who sees you talks about him more than anything else and I need to prove I've found the same people they're all reporting.”

 

Johnny dusted some crumbs from his hands and lips and hesitantly traded seats with Jimmy. His gaze seemed firmly stuck on the keyboard.

 

“I thought you'd be happier about this,” Dib said.

 

Johnny glared up at him, though only his eyes moved. “I'm used to choosing when someone looks at me.”

 

“Don't worry,” Tenna said to Dib as she pulled up a chair behind Johnny. “We've explained the concept of 'audience' to him.”

 

“Let's just do this and get it over with, please,” Johnny said.

 

“We might not even be filmable,” Jimmy said.

 

Johnny remained still with his glare now locked on Dib. “There's a recording of us performing, and Devi can photograph Edgar's extra heads. We're filmable.”

 

Edgar fiddled with the cord around his neck. “I wonder if people who watch this will be able to see us without us having to play for them.”

 

“We'll find out,” Dib said.

 

Johnny looked abruptly at Jimmy. “You don't remember anything yet, do you?”

 

Jimmy glanced wildly at the others for direction. “I – no?”

 

“Can you make shit up? Can you stick to it?”

 

“About remembering?”

 

“We're doing this as the people on stage,” Johnny said.

 

Jimmy's mouth hung open slightly and he looked pointedly at Edgar.

 

Tenna pursed her lips. “So what do _I_ do?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “You dug us up or something, I don't know.”

 

Dib sighed into his microphone, filling the room with a brief airy static. “Are you guys ready?”

 

Johnny smirked at him and his irritation and weariness vanished, replaced with something a little threatening, but _fun._ “Are _you?_ ”

 

As reluctant as Johnny had been to even sit down, he charged through and commanded the interview. His sharp responses came quickly, fluidly, like he'd written a script out in advance and was singing his way through it.

 

“You're causing a bit of a stir among the paranormal research community,” Dib said.

 

“We hadn't noticed,” Johnny said.

 

“Just like people don't notice _you_ , right? Your gimmick seems to be sudden appearances. Is it smoke and mirrors?”

 

“We don't have smoke or mirrors,” Edgar answered. He was careful, tried to think of appropriate responses for a dead guy who could also somehow talk and play a keyboard. He could mention technical specifics without breaking the character, right?

 

“We might be more impressive if we did,” Devi said. She was evidently not being so careful.

 

Dib smirked and kept going. “Well, several of our members have reported seeing you coming from seemingly nowhere, so let's get right down the core of it. How are you doing it?”

 

“Sheer force of will,” Johnny said.

 

“Could something paranormal be going on here?”

 

“You're more likely to find Hell, I think.”

 

Jimmy tilted his head. “Are those different? Hell feels pretty paranormal to me.”

 

Dib smiled and the slight tilt of his head produced glare on his glasses that obscured his eyes. “I'm supposed to be asking the questions here, but since you asked: The definition would depend on which forums you frequent and which school of thought you subscribe to. Some of us separate the paranormal from the spiritually-related topics, and others find there is a clear line. The Hell-Seekers forum, for instance, specifically sees the search for topics related to Hell as a separate pursuit altogether as they assign a different level of importance to the origins of the idea being based in ancient religious texts than the origins of say, Bigfoot, which is a considerably more modern discovery based on eyewitness testimony and is not inherently a religious concept. Not that some people haven't made him into one of course, but you know how those people are...” He began to laugh to himself and then seemed to sense eyes glazing over on the other end of the camera because he returned to the task at hand somewhat abruptly. He looked back into the camera and the glare vanished from his glasses. “You sound like you're telling me that what you're doing _is_ paranormal, Hell or not.”

 

“You're welcome to figure out the science behind it,” Johnny told him. “We'd be as surprised as you.”

 

“We hardly know who we used to be,” Edgar added. “So we're not questioning what happens to us now.”

 

“Who you _used_ to be?” Dib prodded. “Now that sounds interesting.”

 

“Funny thing about dying,” Edgar continued. “It tends to make a mess of you.”

 

Johnny smiled deviously and Edgar decided that seeing it made making a joke about his own death completely worth it.

 

“We were connected through our history with Nny, and most people can't see us,” Devi added. “That's all we know.”

 

Dib leaned forward, his apparent script abandoned. He adjusted his glasses. “So who are you, then? What's your goal?”

 

“The Homicides,” Johnny answered.

 

“Is that you or your goal?”

 

“Either.”

 

“And you come back from the end only to decide to sing songs in public places? That seems ridiculous, frankly. Who decided this was what you were going to do?”

 

“Everyone,” Tenna told him. “It just sort of _was._ ”

 

“It's an obvious conclusion in a world that works that works this way,” Johnny added.

 

Dib folded his hands under his chin. “And what way is that?”

 

“Everyone with a song, people ruled by the things in their heads. Every attempt at communication must be delivered in a language the intended recipient understands. When you're trying to be seen by the most people possible, you go for the broadest language.

 

“You've said quite a bit there, let me see here... So the things you're singing --”

 

“The words don't matter,” Johnny insisted.

 

“But you're writing them, correct?”

 

“Yes, but the literal words I'm saying? In the end, those don't matter. People would still see us, still react, even if I was singing gibberish.”

 

Edgar was not entirely sure he believed that, but maybe Johnny didn't either.

 

“So why write words at all?”

 

“To compensate. As a bonus. For fun. To scream therapeutically into the void.”

 

“It's better communication,” Jimmy said. “You know, after the first layer, if they understand the words too, then that's great too.”

 

“So it matters,” Dib said slowly, “but it's not _critical_.”

 

Johnny's smile faded and he stared unblinking into the camera. “None of you will ever connect with us anyway. The words are for _us_. All we're doing is existing. Aggressively.”

 

“It matters to us personally,” Devi added. “But what it does 'out there' doesn't matter.”

 

“So is this art or communication?”

 

Edgar and Johnny responded with “Both,” at the same time, but Johnny went further. “Art is _inherently_ communication. If it's not communication, you're doing it wrong.”

 

Tenna shrugged. “It's just what we're doing, you know? How other people see it and if they get the message isn't up to us, so we're not worried. We just want people to see that we're here.”

 

“In that case, how do you decide where you play?”

 

“I drive and we find something fun,” she said. “Every time is a new accident. We do some planning, but it's generic, like, 'Let's find a park', 'What about a theater?', 'Is there a sports thing happening? Let's crash it.' Otherwise, we just make it up.”

 

“We're not picky,” Devi said.  
  
Johnny closed his eyes. “Maybe one day we ought to be.”

 

“Put that on our blog,” Edgar said. “Dead amnesiacs with discerning taste in venues.”

 

“I'll have a link to your blog going up with this interview, anything you want to tell people about it?”

 

Jimmy looked like he could rocket from his chair with the force of his restrained enthusiasm, but he managed to hold it so he didn't ruin the image too spectacularly. “It's some behind the scenes stuff,” he said. “Just adventures with dead people. We put up some photos of our trips, things we like, and some lyrics and little news articles. We'll have the text of this on there eventually. There's also a place where you can ask us questions, so if you have people who don't get their questions answered here, they can try their luck with us.”

 

“Or they can come try to find us in person,” Johnny said.

 

“Yeah, come take some readings, see us do spooky shit,” Tenna said, wiggling her fingers. “I've only got half of what they've got. Maybe an only partly undead girl is worth a look too.”

 

Johnny grinned at the camera, and leaned close. He folded his hands under his chin and batted his eyelashes. “I think that should be all you need, Dib.”

 

“It'll do,” Dib said, already clacking away at his keyboard. “Thank you for your cooperation. Though I may ask you for a follow up pending viewer reaction. Consider your continued use of my card agreement to do this.”

 

Johnny frowned a little. “Noted.”

 

“Good. You should be encountering one of my associates soon. Stay within city limits for 24 hours. I've got to get to editing this.”

 

Johnny saluted him and the window went black. He let out a shaky breath and turned to the others. “Well. Wasn't that fun.”

 

“That was _weird_ ,” Tenna said. “That was just straight up weird. What's he going to do with that?”

 

Devi stood up and stretched. “I'm more concerned with what we're going to do within city limits for the next entire fucking day. It's two traffic lights and a gas station.”

 

Johnny reclined in his chair and closed his eyes. “Pfft. What can't we do? We've been limited to this kind of space our whole lives. Maybe this library has couches somewhere.”

 

“Or the floor is lava,” Jimmy whispered.

 

In a split second, the entire group bolted upright in their chairs and prepared to see what level they could bring the game to in a building full of books, desks, and rolling office chairs.

 

 

 

 

The morning after Dib's interview, Edgar and the others were woken from dreams of shuffling books and broken tables in seas of invisible lava by something tapping on the van windows. After a groggy and justified attempt to blame Jimmy or Johnny for the noise, Devi gasped when she turned and saw a person standing outside the passenger side door. She rolled the window down a few inches.

 

“...Yes?”

 

“Agent Mothman sent me to give this to you,” the man outside replied. His head was mostly obscured by a hooded sweatshirt as he handed Devi a shallow rectangular box.

 

Devi took the box, but hardly seemed to register that she was holding it. “You can see us?”

 

“Yeah. I saw you about a week and a half ago and sent in a report to SEN.”

 

Tenna leaned closer to Devi and squinted at the man beyond the window. “The fuck's a SEN?”

 

“Oh, the Swollen Eyeball Network. It's our forum. I saw you guys and – I don't know how you did what you did, but when I saw it I knew they had to hear about it. Other people had seen you too, they wanted to classify you as cryptids. Agent Mothman contacted me just before his interview went live since I'm nearby. Said it was payment.”

 

Jimmy, suddenly enthusiastically conscious, jumped over Devi's lap and snatched the box from her hands. “This is for me, thanks!” He shuffled back to his seat like he dragging prey back to his lair.

 

The man leaned toward the window and craned his neck to see further into the van. “Are you all stuffed in there?”

 

Edgar tried to gain some leverage to prop himself up, but there was no way to do it without smashing Johnny. Luckily, Johnny objected strongly to a strange person peering into their windows and he shot up off of the seat. Still half-painted from the prior night, he opened the van door to stare down the startled hood man.

 

“Tell Dib we got his bribe.”

 

“Whoa. Hey, you were the one --”

 

“You can leave now.”

 

“Wait, I just wanted to ask you about --”

 

“You. Can. Go.”

 

“Uh, okay. Right.” He nodded at Johnny and then at Devi, saluting them all like he was tipping a hat, and then strolled away from the van. Johnny slammed the van door while Jimmy tore into the box the man had delivered.

 

“Oh, shit.” Jimmy's package fell away and revealed a tablet like the ones from Dib's lab in the school.

 

Tenna whistled appreciatively. “Whoa, fancy stuff.”

 

Edgar pulled himself off the seat to get a better look, and Johnny sat on the floor in front of him, though he wasn't paying much attention to Jimmy. In a matter of seconds, Jimmy had the tablet booted up and began listing all the features. “This is a camera, there's a photo editor, here's the browser...”

 

Instead of Jimmy, Johnny was watching the sky.

 

“So people seeing us...,” Johnny murmured as he gazed out the window. “...isn't temporary.”

 

“Or it at least lasts a week and a half,” Edgar said.

 

“I feel weird about this.”

 

“About what?”

 

Before Johnny could answer, Jimmy suddenly clamped his hand over his mouth and mumbled “Holy shit,” into his hand.

 

Tenna reclined her chair to look over him. “What now?”

 

“Look at this,” Jimmy said, dropping his hand. “This is notifications and questions from the blog.”

 

Johnny and Devi turned sincere interest in Jimmy's direction for the first time since the box arrived. Johnny reached out for the tablet. “Let me see.”

 

Edgar looked over Johnny's shoulder as Johnny scrolled through the notifications the blog had accumulated since Dib's interview. It wasn't bottomless, but it was far more than Jimmy's project had collected until then, and it was definitely more people than they thought were on Dib's forums.

 

“Holy fuck,” Johnny said as the list zipped by. “This is... really weird. This is all Dib's Bigfoot People?”

 

Jimmy grinned at him and took the tablet back. “Do you wanna answer some of the questions?”

 

“Some,” Johnny conceded. “But nothing about the real us. Just the stage character shit. Nothing about where we live or anything. As far as Bigfoot People know, we're a bunch of supernatural dead people.”

 

“Everyone but that guy you just told off,” Edgar noted.

 

“I'm not worried about him,” Johnny said.

 

Tenna leaned over Jimmy's shoulder and began poking at the screen with him. She opened one message and smirked at it. “Nny, this girl wants to have sex with your rain song.”

 

Johnny rocked backwards and nearly into Edgar's lap. “That's fucking repulsive.”

 

“And physically impossible,” Devi said. “Calm down.”

 

“I think it's meant to be a compliment,” Tenna said. “All these caps and exclamation marks everywhere.”

 

“I'll answer that one,” Johnny said. He held out his hand and Jimmy slowly passed him the tablet.

 

Devi turned around in her seat. “ _Really_?”

 

“Yeah,” Johnny answered as his fingers fluttered over the screen. “As an example.”

 

“Don't alienate her,” Edgar said. “We do want these people to like us, right?”

 

“Dib's people already feel alienated.” He began typing out his response. “And I don't really care that these people like us. I want them to see, I want them to know, and, ideally, I want them to be afraid. If they decide to be obsessed instead, that's their damage.”

 

“Damage attracts damage,” Devi said. “Whatever you tell her will probably just make the worst people even worse.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Works for me.”

 

Edgar watched Johnny apprehensively as he tapped out the response. “You're sure?”

 

Johnny shook his head. “Edgar, these people don't matter. All we need is for some people to be stupid, some people to be afraid, and enough people to be both.”

 

“And then?”

 

Johnny grinned at him. “And then I'm happy.”

 

 

 

 

 

They spent the day celebrating, performing dramatic readings of the ridiculous questions they received, and imagining for the first time that they might really be able to do what they saw themselves doing when they practiced in Edgar's garage.

 

Johnny suggested they have something of a last full day of taking advantage of what they were now, and sang insults out the windows at people passing in the street to start them off. Tenna ordered them food from a drive-thru entirely in song and kept a stoic poker face when the cashier watched her pass the food out to empty spaces with names in the rest of the van. Jimmy and Devi took turns screaming among the stacks of wood at the hardware store, their voices echoing to the ceiling while Edgar quietly took a nail gun 'just to see how it works'. He later found he couldn't stop laughing hearing large nails slam into the wood and fluffy upholstery inside random items in the furniture gallery they visited immediately after. The more he found it hilarious, the more Johnny beamed adoringly between laughter of his own, prompting even more use of the gun, which just kept getting funnier until he and Johnny were in a feedback loop of delight and destruction and had to be dragged from the store by the others.

 

When they were finally locked out of all other places to terrorize, they settled for unwinding and parking the van in the lot for a 24-hour convenience store and gas station. They stood outside enjoying existence on and among the tables and benches meant for summertime afternoons rather than autumn midnights. Several semi-trucks idled in the lot next to the them, filling in any silence with a pleasant hum. The air was cold, colder than was really comfortable to stand around in, but they each had an armful of warm food in a bag to keep them going.

 

“One day, we won't be able to steal shit because too many people will be able to see us,” Jimmy said.

 

Devi swallowed a bite of her burrito. “And?”

 

Jimmy looked into his bag and pulled out some cheese sticks. “I'm kinda looking forward to it, but it's also kind of shit.” He shook one of the cheese sticks at her. “I like this, you know? I can just walk in and take these. Imagine having to pay for it. Imagine having to pay for _any_ of today.”

 

Devi's song was quiet - they all were, except for still-absent Johnny - but it had also reduced its usual intense spikes. In a few places, it matched beautifully with Jimmy's song, which had slowed into something a bit more subdued.

 

“I just keep thinking about what Nny said to Dib,” she said, peeling back foil.

 

Edgar's churro rained cinnamon all over his chest when he took a bite. There was likely a not-insignificant amount in his beard too. He tried to dust himself off, but it mostly made it worse and smashed cinnamon into his hoodie. “Which thing?”

 

“These people will never connect to us,” Devi said. “They'll never get us.”

 

“But people followed the blog because they liked Nny's rain apocalypse song. There might be _someone_ who gets us,” Edgar tried.

 

“We were suspicious of _you_ , though,” Jimmy said. “We didn't think you were us and you were invisible and remembering shit. You're... you're _obviously_ us. You're _obviously_ sharing the same thing.” He looked up to the stars and his song hit a key that took Edgar's breath for a few seconds. “The people out here don't stand a chance to measure up to it if we thought _you_ didn't. They're always going to be foreign. It's... just always gonna be us.”

 

“ _you and the guitar and I_

_make three”_

 

Edgar bit his lip. He heard what Jimmy was really saying – they all did – but no one wanted to touch that particular sore spot.

 

“Why are we doing this, then?” Edgar asked.

 

“It's an invasion,” Johnny said.

 

Tenna smiled into her burrito. “I like the sound of that.”

 

Devi smirked. “Me too. Jimmy, add it to the blog – The Homicides are a hostile takeover.”

 

Jimmy didn't seem to hear her.

 

Tenna exchanged a worried look with Devi and then dramatically stood up and clapped her hand on Jimmy's shoulder. “Dude, come on, come walk with me through the store again. I want to look for those things that make me puke purple last time.”

 

He jumped a little and looked back to the stars once before letting Tenna drag him inside with a disinterested, “Sure.”

 

The door jingled as they entered and Devi sighed when it closed behind them.

 

“Oh my god, I was not prepared for this kind of Jimmy,” she said, dragging her hands over her face. “I was good with simple Jimmy. I was good with Jimmy who needed nothing to make him happy but Nny singing in his face that he's _garbage_. I don't know what to do with this Jimmy.”

 

Edgar sat on the picnic table next to Johnny, his bag of warm stolen food in his lap. “I feel _guilty._ ”

 

“I don't,” Johnny said.

 

“Of course you don't, you're an asshole,” Devi snapped. The spikes in her song returned.

 

He spread his arms like he'd just done a trick and mockingly made a face at her. “Ta-da!”

 

Edgar looked behind him through the glass door to the convenience store. Jimmy's hair was bobbing up and down somewhere near the iced tea section. “I think I'd feel better if he was still being an ass about it all the time,” Edgar said. “Now he just looks at me like it causes him physical pain.”

 

Devi put her face in her hands. “God, you have no idea.”

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing,” Devi said. “It's probably just his usual over-reactive bullshit that doesn't mean anything.”

 

“He likes you, too,” Johnny said. It was detached and matter of fact as he scraped at the bottom of his cup with a straw.

 

Devi clenched her fists near her knees. “Nny!”

 

“That's what it is, isn't it? He's been walking around like he doesn't know who to be jealous of for weeks.”

 

“ _Me_?” Edgar caught himself TV-gesturing too late to stop it and had his hand on his chest. “That's not – he _resents_ me because he's obsessed with _you_ , he's not in love with me.”

 

“'Love' would be a strong word for it,” Johnny said. “It's...” He sucked some residual hot chocolate from the end of his straw. “...an awkward crush. From when he heard your song, I bet.”

 

“That doesn't make any sense.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “ _Jimmy_ doesn't make any sense.”

 

“I don't – god, I feel _worse_ now.”

 

“It's not your job to take care of Jimmy,” Johnny told him.

 

“Maybe not _just_ me...”

 

Devi held her hands up. “Easy, Mom.”

 

“Hey, come on! He just said this is it, this is all we get, no matter how many people see us. If _we_ aren't taking care of each other, who the hell is?”

 

Johnny and Devi shot each other worried looks just like the ones Devi and Tenna had exchanged over Jimmy. Edgar expected an accusation or snark, but got quiet questions instead.

 

“What do you think you should be doing?” Johnny asked.

 

The food in his lap was getting colder. He pulled out a chicken strip just to have something to do with his hands, something to feel less exposed.

 

“I don't know. I can't fix anything, but I really want to.”

 

“You want us to try to make him hate you or something?” Johnny asked.

 

“No!” Edgar surprised himself with how forcefully the outburst came out and shrunk back a little. “I don't want to do that, and even if I did, that's like removing a quarter of his world, that's cruel. I just... wish I could help. Can I make myself less – what did I even do to make him – ? Shit.”

 

Devi smiled at him. “You're like the human incarnation of 'Can't we all just get along?'. It's both hilarious and sweet.”

 

Edgar frowned. “It's the TV thing, isn't it?”

 

“No,” Johnny interjected. “That's just you.”

 

Edgar tried to smile as some kind of thanks and then took a sad bite of the chicken. “What would you do?”

 

“I just harass him,” Johnny said. “Doesn't make a difference, though.”

 

“I was mostly asking Devi.”

 

She shook her head. “I don't know. I'm not good at this stuff. You think I know what to do with Tenna?”

 

Edgar swallowed. “Oh.”

 

“Yeah.” She glanced up at the store windows and let out a long breath. It was just barely visible in the air. “It's complicated. And frankly, I think Jimmy would be just as happy with her. Or me if I walked in there and told him I would for some reason. That kid is a fucking mess.”

 

“We all are,” Johnny said. “There was no way we were ever going to not be. We should just embrace it. Put 'The Homicides are a mess' on the blog.”

 

Edgar stared into his bag of lukewarm fried side dishes and sighed.

 

Devi stood up and patted his shoulder. “I'm going to go in and help Tenna in case Jimmy is coming unglued on beef jerky mountain back there.”

 

Edgar moved to follow her, but she pushed him down.

 

“Maybe you two should just stay out here,” she said. “You know.”

 

Edgar sat back down, defeated. “Yeah. Okay.”

 

Devi disappeared inside with the jingling door chime and Edgar helplessly stared at the door.

 

“You know, I felt really pleased with myself about all this until now.” He was talking to Johnny, though whether Johnny answered didn't feel important.

 

“And now?”

 

He shrugged. “Just guilty.”

 

Johnny leaned back and looked at the sky. “Edgar, Jimmy's roller coaster feelings are not your responsibility.”

 

“You really don't feel anything about this?”

 

“I didn't say that. I said I don't feel _guilty_.”

 

“How _do_ you feel then?”

 

He shrugged one shoulder and scrunched his face. “It's... complicated. I spent a lot of time with Jimmy before you showed up.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Not like I spend with you,” Johnny clarified. “But the stuff he said when he broke into the house, about it being Devi and Tenna and me and him a lot of the time, that wasn't entirely incorrect. He was just seeing shit that wasn't there, following me more than I was really _with_ him. So, I feel bad for him a little -- he _is_ my friend, as disturbing as that is -- but he's also the guy who grabbed me and touched me all the time when I didn't want to be, so I admit to finding this a bit karmic.”

 

“I see.”

 

Johnny grinned. “Sorry it's not the pretty answer, but it's how I feel.”

 

Edgar shook his head. “It's okay. I get it, it just doesn't shake the feeling for me.” The chill finally set in as the last warmth he could have taken from the food bag faded. He left the bag on the table and rubbed his arms. “I'm going to wait for them in the van.”

 

“Can I come too?”

 

Despite the cold, there was distinct warmth in Johnny asking to keep him company.

 

“Yeah. Please.”

 

 

 

Inside the van felt both safer and more exposed. Edgar sank into his spot in the back and was still able to see Devi, Tenna, and Jimmy looping through the magazine aisle. What were they even telling him? Look at these magazines full of people, surely you can have a crush on one of them instead?

 

“He'll cope,” Johnny said after a silent minute. “He's weirdly good at that.”

 

“Breaking into my house was good coping?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “He was good before that and he's been good since.”

 

“So we just wait for him to have another random explosion later?”

 

“It's probably better than a constant low level assault.”

 

“I wish there was a way I could just fix it. I just keep hearing what he said – what _you_ said -- over and over.”

 

“What, that we're alone in this? You _know_ we're alone, you always have. You were the one who told me you didn't care who else saw you as long as _we_ did.”

 

“I still don't, but...” He looked at Johnny, tried to make him understand what Edgar wasn't even sure of understanding himself just by staring into him. “I'm scared, Nny, and I don't even know what of. I tried to _decide_ not to be, I keep _telling_ myself not to be, but this is making it worse.”

 

Johnny slid closer to him. “Some people, when they're scared, just try to scare other people to compensate for it.”

 

“I'm not scary.”

 

Johnny laughed. “No, usually you're just kind of adorable. But we can work on scary. Maybe the next time we go out, and you're scared for whatever vague philosophical reason, you concentrate on making yourself the least scared person in the room. I imagine it might be... empowering.”

 

“Is that what you're doing? Channeling your own fear into looking scary?”

 

He shrugged again and looked down at his lap, fiddling with the hem on his shirt. “It's an idea.”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

Johnny winced and made a small sound. He tried to cover it with a cough, but he'd stopped being able to fool Edgar with things like that a long time ago.

 

Edgar thought it best not to bring it up directly, however.

 

“So, you didn't eat much. Are you doing okay?”

 

Johnny looked at him, a little bewildered at the sudden topic shift. “Yes?”

 

“You don't sound sure.”

 

“You don't sound _specific_. Maybe tell me what you're worried about in particular.”

 

Edgar tried to laugh and sigh at the same time. “Just how you're doing with things. I was sort of worried about Dib's delivery guy from before.”

 

“One random guy is not going to break the dead people image, we're fine. Besides, I don't think I'm the one who dropped the dead people ball with him.”

 

“Not that. I meant you were really... mean?”

 

Johnny blinked. “It's part of the act. Scaring people, remember? It's not like he matters anyway, we'll never see him again.”

 

“Is it all an act, though? You just seem angrier in general lately.”

 

“I live in a _van_. With _Jimmy._ It's stress.”

 

“Okay.” Though maybe it wasn't, he wanted to trust what Johnny said. “You'll tell me if there's something wrong, right?”

 

“I'll try.” Johnny sighed and sagged against Edgar, putting his head on Edgar's shoulder. Though the others weren't around, it still felt like a rare and bold declaration.

 

“I'm tired,” Johnny admitted.

 

“It may surprise you to know I will not be angry if you sleep there.”

 

Johnny laughed softly, his breath puffing against Edgar's shoulder. “It's not that kind of tired, I don't think.”

 

“Are you tired of singing?” It was selfish to hope the answer was no, probably, but it had only just in the last few days felt like they could be something, and Edgar hoped anyway.

 

Johnny was quiet. For several heartbeats, Edgar listened to Johnny breathing on his shoulder and his own song vibrating at the back of his brain.

 

“It's complicated,” Johnny said finally.

 

“I'm not going anywhere at the moment; explain it to me.”

 

“I will, but... later. Later and not here.”

 

“Right, okay.” Somewhere where they wouldn't be walked in on, interrupted, or stared at. “Look, if we're really going to do all this, we should probably try a hotel every now and then.”

 

Johnny nodded, smushing his cheek against Edgar's shoulder. “Yeah, we just brought Dib a shit ton of traffic. He can afford it.”

 

As much as he said it was not the sleeping sort of tired, Johnny sounded drained.

 

“Hey, if you want to sleep, we can move.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

Edgar leaned forward and turned to try to cram himself into the seat again, but instead of getting up to give him room to do it, Johnny let himself fall somewhat limply against Edgar's chest.

 

“Okay, this is … _not_ what I was trying to do.”

 

“Objections?”

 

“Not really? Hang on, though, here, get up a second.”

 

Edgar pushed Johnny off of him for a moment, found a bag of clothes in the back to act as a cushion, and then reclined comfortably before letting Johnny attempt to use him as a full-body pillow.

 

Johnny draped over him as though he'd done it hundreds of times. His apparent comfort with the situation contrasted ridiculously with Edgar's pounding heart. How was it that Johnny was the one with a history of discomfort with touch and closeness and yet Edgar was the one whose body tried to end his entire existence when it happened?

 

“Are you going to breathe okay with me here?” Johnny asked.

 

“I think so?”

 

“I ask because your heart sounds like it is about to jump ship from a lack of oxygen.”

 

“No, I'm good on oxygen. It's just you.”

 

“Do you want me to get up before I kill you again?”

 

A cold feeling washed over him. “Please don't say that.”

 

Johnny held his breath for several seconds. He let out the breath along with, “Sorry.”

 

“It's okay.” He hoped it was, anyway. “Are you going to be okay there?”

 

Johnny yawned. “I'm okay if you are.”

 

“I'm okay.”

 

A comforting silence settled into the van, no matter how much Edgar's heart wanted to be heard. He closed his eyes in it and almost forgot he was crammed into the back of a van. At the other side of the lot, the trucks were still idling, enhancing rather than ruining the quiet.

 

“Do you hear that?” Johnny asked, his voice quiet and blurred with sleep.

 

“What am I hearing?”

 

“That song.”

 

“I hear mine.”

 

“No, the other one.”

 

Had Johnny heard his own song after getting comfortable enough to use Edgar as a pillow? Edgar heard his own after resolving to stay with Johnny even after all the remembering, maybe this was Johnny's equivalent personal revelation.

 

“I don't hear anything,” Edgar said.

 

“I can't... I can't really make it out. It's like it's stuck underwater. You really don't hear it?”

 

“I don't.” He approached the next part gently. “Do you think it's your--”

 

“It's not me.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“I'm sure. Nevermind.”

 

Johnny shifted his weight and settled in against Edgar. He didn't say anything else, though there were occasional moments of half-humming some tune Edgar didn't recognize. It was warm and weirdly soothing to have even some of Johnny's weight on him, even if his heart panicked again every time he remembered that it was _Johnny._ Edgar closed his eyes, aiming for distraction or complete calm, and thought about grocery stores and static in televisions and interviews with Bigfoot People and Jimmy alone in a trailer blogging with tiaras and lobsters.

 

He couldn't say he was exactly asleep when the van doors flew open, but he didn't feel entirely based in reality either.

 

“Right? I just wasn't prepared to – ”

 

Tenna stopped mid-sentence when she saw them. She then immediately tried to distract herself, Jimmy, _someone_ with a loud declaration of how much of the candy they stole she was going to eat. The others had seen Edgar and Johnny crammed together in the backseat before, but it had been such a production of necessity, or at least cleverly passed off as such. This was a different sort of statement.

 

And the timing could have been better.

 

Jimmy stared at him a few seconds and then slowly sank into his seat. Edgar's heart sank with him. How had he let being with Johnny distract him so much? How could he have forgotten how this would look so quickly? Was he really this selfish? Could he just fix this awkward sick feeling in the future by not doing anything? Was he really considering that he should hide the moments Johnny was comfortable with for Jimmy's benefit? Distantly, he began to regret eating the lukewarm chicken.

 

“I'm gonna put the radio on a little,” Tenna said quietly. “Just till we get somewhere else.”

 

Edgar nodded when she looked at him, afraid speaking would shatter the fragile silence into something angry and sharp.

 

He watched the streetlights from the back window of the van and thankfully the trance Edgar fell into calmed some of his inner panic and let him accept the moment as it was. Johnny remained mostly asleep and the soft voices of the others plus the muffled radio filled the van with a comforting kind of buzz. He might have fallen asleep once or twice watching what stars he could see. Johnny sang some broken tune in his sleep, hardly above a whisper, his breath leaving a warm spot against Edgar's chest.

 

On their way to a suitable place to leave the van for the night, they passed a long string of street lights. The light whipped over Johnny's face and, for one terrifying moment, a flash of remembered panic shot through Edgar's veins. _It was dangerous to have him so close, if he woke up to this there could be pain, how did he get here, could he be moved without upsetting him, could Edgar outrun him --_

 

And then it was gone, as soon as it had flashed by.

 

He hugged Johnny in defiance of someone else's fear, and Johnny only made a small surprised sound in response.

 

_The difference is this. No matter what else comes up, this is still us._

 

 

 

The discomfort lingered through morning. Ignoring Jimmy and being kind to him seemed equally damning, paralyzing Edgar into hardly looking at him. Tenna tried to keep things light and funny, but the harder she tried, the less convincing she was. Devi and Johnny said next to nothing, while Jimmy himself seemed mostly entirely normal. He showed the others silly questions the blog had received and joked about taking photos to post. If he was upset, he'd become adept at hiding it literally overnight.

 

Maybe Tenna and Devi had said something helpful?

 

So with only Jimmy pretending to be okay, an uncomfortable relative silence lingered in the van. Mercifully, there was nothing like performing to reset everyone's feelings, and that evening their invasion of the lobby at a stadium breathed new comfort and confidence into them. For people to see them, they had to be good, and to be as good as they were able to be with a lot of questionable supplies and limited know-how, they had to work closely together – giving each other cues, trusting each other, helping each other. The music always suffered if they weren't having fun. Creating and playing music together connected them like nothing else could. There were no conversations, no other kind of communication, that could make Edgar feel closer to the others than what they found in songs. Johnny had first connected with him through some stray notes on a keyboard, and he'd first felt kinship with the others dancing in the choir room.

 

This wasn't what they _did_ , it was _them._

 

They spent the night laughing at the people they should have been singing for, rocketing back and forth between joking twisted happiness

 

_“Oh my god_   
_Oh you think I'm in control_   
_Oh my god_   
_Oh you think it's all for fun_

_Find a cure_   
_Find a cure for my life_

_Put a price_   
_Put a price on my soul”_

 

to Johnny's captivating control

 

_“And through these hard times we'll work harder, harder_   
_Give me hard times, I'll work harder, harder_   
_For revolution hard time for some resolution_   
_Time for some revolution, this battle will be won_

_If they only see you with their fear_   
_And they only hear you with their pride_   
_And they only see you with their fear_   
_And they only hear you with their pride_

_And work harder, harder, harder, harder_   
_Harder, harder, harder, harder, hard times”_

 

and back to fun.

 

_“Oh, I could throw you in the lake_   
_Or feed you poisoned birthday cake_   
_I won't deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone_   
_Oh, I could bury you alive_   
_But you might crawl out with a knife_   
_And kill me when I'm sleeping_   
_That's why..._

_I can't decide_   
_Whether you should live or die_   
_Oh, you'll probably go to heaven_   
_Please don't hang your head and cry_   
_No wonder why_   
_My heart feels dead inside_   
_It's cold and hard and petrified_   
_Lock the doors and close the blinds_   
_We're going for a ride”_

 

 

They repurposed songs, rewrote words if they chose, and changed the intended meanings with just a shift in style or Johnny's delivery. Johnny laughed through almost every song, and he often took the others with him. They hadn't been counting the number of patrons to the circus who actually saw them, but everyone agreed they felt more visible that night than they ever had.

 

They left the show on a high, laughing together like nothing was wrong, or at least like the levels of wrong had been returned to normal. Johnny talked from a spot snuggled against Edgar and not only did Johnny seem perfectly content being there, no one else flinched or frowned or stared. Edgar didn't feel guilty, Jimmy didn't look angry, Johnny didn't sound uncomfortable. If it could always be this way, it was how Edgar would want it. This felt functional, this felt happy and comfortable, even in a van, and this felt weirdly like a family road trip movie.

 

 

 

 

 

Tenna pulled into the motel parking lot and they all sat in a brief silence under the blinking neon 'vacancy' light.

 

“See, it's stuff like this that makes me question everything I know,” Edgar said, peering out into the lot. “Because this is _exactly_ what motels look like on TV, but lobsters were a total surprise.”

 

What Tenna and the others had also learned was that motels were different from hotels. Tenna had refused to even go inside the first hotel they passed when they caught sight of its lobby looking much like the theater that had caught Johnny's attention in their first downtown. She'd probably burst into poor people flame just entering the door, she reasoned.

 

The others didn't quite understand; their options had always been steal it or don't have it. Tenna was the one who had handled money and people before. Even now, the others only had theoretical money understanding. They'd never come up short in front of a pizza guy and found themselves needing to get creative to get the pizza from him when he was looking right at them.

 

So the hotel frightened her a little. The _motel_ , however, looked like their van in building form, and thus looked doable. It promised all they really needed – beds, showers, a roof. It also had a few more things.

 

“The sign says they have a hot tub,” Tenna said as she shifted the van into park. “So we should all be able to test if they cause spontaneous make-outs like on TV.”

 

“We should _all_ do that?” Devi asked.

 

“For science,” Tenna replied. She leaned a little closer, grinning. “Nny and Edgar don't count unless we have control subjects.”

 

Jimmy opened the door and threw a bag over his shoulder. “Come on, let's just go.”

 

Tenna bit her lip as he crossed the parking lot. So much for their talk in the convenience store.

 

“Nice,” Devi said.

 

“Yeah, fuck me, _you're_ usually the one who makes him feel like shit,” Tenna said. “I'm a fucking monster, god.”

 

Devi shoved her and turned to open her door. “Come on.”

 

 

 

The front desk told Tenna it would be $60 a night for a room, though they seemed confused when she asked if that applied to multiple rooms.

 

Jimmy was already unimpressed by the concept of the motel in general. “People pay for this?”

 

“Apparently,” Tenna said. “That seems to be a running theme with this trip. At any rate, I don't think we can really justify three rooms, even if we're leeching off of Dib's questionable wealth. He might make us do even more interviews.”

 

Johnny looked up from pouring the tiny containers of coffee creamer into the napkin holder. “Three?”

 

“Uh, yeah, you and Edgar, me and Devi, and one for Jimmy, unless you want him with you guys.”

 

“Can't Jimmy stay with you?” Johnny asked.

 

The expected resistance from Devi did not come, instead she just shrugged. “Whatever. If there's enough beds, we can all stay in one. I don't care.”

 

While it was nice that Devi had warmed up to Jimmy as a concept, Tenna had hoped for time she didn't usually get with Devi anymore. Since Jimmy had attached himself to them, she'd seen Devi alone maybe twice. Not that she didn't love having Jimmy around, but...

 

She caught Edgar's expression mimicking her feelings exactly.

 

“I think we can justify _two_ rooms,” Tenna said. She could make finances the bad guy here. “Like maybe we just do girls and ...”

 

Johnny raised his eyebrows. “And?”

 

“The rest of you,” Devi said.

 

“Whatever you want,” Jimmy muttered.

 

Just looking at him made Tenna feel like the guilty bad guy and not Dib's credit. “We'll do two. Edgar and Nny, and us.”

 

Johnny looked proud of himself though he had done nothing but ruin a pile of napkins, and Jimmy only shrugged.

 

 

 

Jimmy's demeanor didn't improve until they opened the door to their room. Two beds stuck out from the wall, and beyond them hummed a long clunky heater. Devi flicked on the light to the little bathroom and surveyed the room.

 

“Hey, this isn't terrible,” Devi said. “I was sort of expecting it to look like a barracks or something.”

 

Jimmy dropped onto one of the white fluffy beds, bag and all. “I don't think I've ever been so happy to see a bed before.”

 

Tenna set her things by the foot of the other bed. “The lady at the desk told me to just ask if I needed anything else, so if we needed to make a pillow fort or some shit, I got us covered.”

 

“Have her deliver shit to Edgar and Nny's room,” Jimmy said. “They can walk in on invisible shenanigans.”

 

“You gonna be okay in here?” Tenna asked him.

 

“I'm cool,” Jimmy said as he tugged off his boots. “I just feel a little _extra_ sometimes.”

 

Tenna watched him stretch his shirt up over his head and considered both that she'd never seen anyone but Devi change before, and that Jimmy was comfortable enough to start doing it here without warning. The weirder part was that Tenna was not uncomfortable either, though prolonged exposure to Edgar made her think that it was only visible people's media that had made her think 'uncomfortable' was how she should feel anyway.

 

Even Devi didn't seem to care, she just began pulling things out of her bag. “It's sort of easy to feel extra around those two after a while,” she said.

 

“Think they're enjoying their _alone time_?” Tenna asked, wiggling her fingers. Since she would not be having any, she'd joke about Edgar and Johnny's.

 

“Not the way you're suggesting, you know that,” Devi said. “Nny would barely tolerate romantic movie night, he's definitely not having sexy motel time.” Then she grinned. “They're probably just sick of you two.”

 

Jimmy's head popped out of the over-sized black t-shirt he usually wore to bed. “Because they're definitely not sick of your sunshine-y ass.”

 

“I'll have you know I'm a fucking delight,” Devi told him.

 

“I am definitely more fun than you are,” Jimmy said. He kicked his way out of his jeans and pulled on some bright orange pajama pants he and Tenna had stolen from the thrift store the year before. No one said anything about the few seconds in between that Jimmy spent in just a shirt and underwear. “I am hours of entertainment in human form.”

 

“Yes, yes,” Tenna said. “You're both pretty. We're _all_ pretty.” She flopped onto the bed next to Devi, knocking their hips and shoulders together. Devi huffed in irritation, but said nothing about it. Instead, she shrugged out of her loose long-sleeved shirt to reveal a black tank and some purple bra straps underneath. Tenna remembered the bra, too. Stolen from the dollar store in a particularly great bonding exercise.

 

Jimmy sat next to Tenna and dropped his head on her shoulder, snuggling her like a cat. “Tragically beautiful exiles with a pillow fort?”

 

Tenna laughed and hugged him. She fluffed his hair, just glad he seemed okay again. “It's the saddest thing. Locked away in a pillow tower, far too beautiful for this world. Or for Edgar and Nny, whichever.”

 

Devi reached in front of Tenna and patted Jimmy's head. “Don't worry. It's hard to be this beautiful, but we didn't want to be in there with them anyway.”

 

Jimmy frowned. “Pfft. Speak for yourself.”

 

Tenna backed away from him to look to his face. “Dude, you don't want to torture yourself stuck in there with them, come on.”

 

“I wouldn't be _stuck_ ,” Jimmy said. He fell back onto the bed, arms stretched over his head. “I'd be _participating.”_

 

Devi raised an eyebrow. “When would that be? Fucking Opposite Day?”

 

Tenna swatted her arm. “Dev!”

 

Jimmy closed his eyes. “It's okay. I'm not dumb, you know. I just – like, if I could have anything, I think it'd be them, you know?”

 

Devi and Tenna exchanged a _look_ they now exclusively used for worrying about Jimmy. They had taken on the emotional baggage that came with caring about Jimmy, but he just kept producing more pieces of it and Tenna was not sure they could keep carrying it.

 

“I still don't know where 'also Edgar' came from,” Devi said. “You do hating him and wanting him at the same time. You don't make any damn sense.”

 

“It's part of my mystery,” Jimmy said. “It's why you like me.”

 

“You're not a fucking mystery. You're the most transparent thing on Earth.”

 

“You like people you don't understand,” Tenna told Devi, batting her eyelashes cartoonishly at her. “That's why you live with me.”

 

Devi leaned close enough to put their foreheads together and despite seeing underwear and bra straps this evening, it was the first thing that made Tenna's face heat up. “How nice that you two understand me so well so I don't have to. What would I do without you?”

 

“Be insufferable,” Tenna said.

 

Devi shoved her and she nearly toppled into Jimmy, saved only by his incredible reflexes.

 

“What's wrong with liking Edgar?” Jimmy asked, bracing Tenna up with one arm. “You guys said he was cute.”

 

“Oh, he is,” Tenna said, sitting back up. “But like, we're not...” She took a breath and tried to lay out the situation in a reasonable way. “He's _super_ into Nny, you know? He's a dork, he is definitely adorable – I would not say no to lots of hugs and shit from him -- but he's really, really taken. We have known him longer as someone really into Nny than not. And Nny also likes him, which, well. That's a weird thing in and of itself.”

 

“Doesn't mean I have to not like him.”

 

“I didn't mean that. I just meant, like... be realistic.”

 

Jimmy inhaled deeply. “Yeah, I'm invisible, and I have no family, and I play in a band popular among Bigfoot Enthusiasts. I'm realistic twenty-four seven.”

 

“ _We're_ you're family, dude.”

 

“You know what I meant.”

 

“I guess. But visible people families all seem kinda dumb. Have you seen the shit that goes on with them? Chores, getting sent to your room, disappointing people, those same people pretending they give a shit about you... Fuck that, we're so much better. We give real, actual shit about each other.”

 

“I'll take the figurative shit,” Devi muttered.

 

Jimmy laughed, despite trying to roll over and hide it.

 

Tenna poked him. “See? You think so too!”

 

“Fuck you,” he said, laughing through it. “I'm still not going to be realistic!”

 

“We just don't want you extra fucked up,” Devi said. “That's all.”

 

Jimmy looked at her. “I think it's a little late.”

 

Tenna tapped her fingers together in front of her chin. “Hmm, if I had to rank you... Yeah, you're probably right under Nny on the fucked up scale.”

 

“And where am I?” Devi asked.

 

“Just above me.”

 

“There is no way I'm more fucked up than you.”

 

“You're _repressed_ somehow,” Tenna told her. “That's fucked up.”

 

“That's your diagnosis, then, Medicine Woman?”

 

“She's probably right,” Jimmy said. “You're really uptight for someone who grew up with _us._ ”

 

“I didn't 'grow up' with you guys, we've known each other like three years.”

 

“It's a developmentally significant time, I think.”

 

Tenna nodded sagely. “Doctor Jimmy has read one point five psychology books. He knows.”

 

Devi sighed and pulled the hair ties holding her pigtails out. Her hair fell over her shoulders in a purple wave and she gathered it all back up in a single pony tail. “We're not developing, we're treading water. We don't have time to develop into 'mature adults' when we're stealing food and running from Satan.... in a band.”

 

She stopped and looked at Jimmy and Tenna as though she didn't know how she got there with them.

 

Tenna stared back at her.

 

“This might be the first time I've really laid it all out like that out loud,” Devi admitted. She fell back on the bed, so Tenna followed. The three of them lay there staring at the ceiling tiles with their legs dangling over the side of the bed.

 

“We might _all_ be fucked up,” Devi said quietly.

 

Tenna awkwardly patted her arm. “There you go.”

 

They went quiet again, losing themselves in dust and brown water stains. Tenna's mind wandered to the next room where Johnny and Edgar were staying and she wondered if it was healthy, she wondered if she should have stressed it being a bad idea to Edgar a little harder instead of having so much fun with him, she wondered if Johnny would lose his grip on reality. She heard the conversations she'd had with Devi and Jimmy in late night pillow forts echoing back: “Would we like him if we had a choice?” “Was it right to let someone as good as Edgar be with him?”

 

As happy as Edgar seemed with Johnny, Tenna briefly considered trying to break them up to steer Edgar to Jimmy instead. She dismissed the idea immediately, however, when it was followed by all the memories of the fun she'd had with Johnny over the years. Even if he was kind of – or totally – an asshole, Tenna liked him. Devi and Jimmy did too.

 

And they were all stuck.

 

“Are you guys a thing?” Jimmy asked.

 

Tenna nearly choked on the air. The question hadn't been an accusation or a demand. He'd asked as though he just wanted the time.

 

“Um, what?” Stalling, but normal, right?

 

“Are you guys a thing, are you guys together?”

 

“I... think that's up to Devi,” Tenna managed.

 

“Is it?” Devi asked.

 

“Well, I mean if it was up to _me..._ ” Tenna twisted the hem of her shirt around her fingers, staring purposefully at the ceiling. “I thought it was kind of obvious that I'd want to, you know?”

 

“I – yeah, it is.” Devi was quiet and so Tenna listened to only her own pounding heartbeat for a few seconds until Devi spoke again. “I think we should talk about this later, okay?”

 

Tenna tried to laugh it off, of course, but felt a little sick. “Yeah, yeah, of course. No problem.”

 

“Sorry,” Jimmy said. “I thought you were. I thought it would just be easier if I said something.”

 

“You're fine,” Devi said. “Don't worry about it.”

 

Jimmy pushed himself up and went back to the other bed. His bag rustled and he sighed deeply, clearly worrying about it.

 

Edgar and Johnny's room now sounded really appealing.

 

 

 

 

 

There were two beds in the room.

 

Johnny dropped his things on one and watched Edgar drop his on the other after the tiniest pause. At least here there was a choice.

 

They'd slept in their clothes so often in the last two weeks Johnny almost considered not changing. Once he decided to, however, it seemed a much larger thing than it should have been. He'd been living in Edgar's house for well over a year and they'd spent whole days in t-shirts and ugly pajama pants without much of a thought for nearly that entire time.

 

But now he hesitated, now it felt exposed, now it was new and awkward and he wasn't sure why.

 

Edgar smiled weakly at him from the other bed. “I feel really dumb too, if that helps.”

 

There had probably been a time when Johnny would have scowled at anyone picking his thoughts from his face like that, but he could hardly remember it. Now he was not only not scowling, he laughed. Sometimes, it felt like Edgar had always been around in this lifetime, that he'd been there since Johnny first realized he existed, since before Jimmy since before Devi, since before anything. Edgar knew so much about him and had shared so much with him that his memories had begun trying to stitch Edgar in where he hadn't been. His head was particularly adept at contaminating itself.

 

But at least he wasn't alone in feeling lost in a motel room.

 

“It does help,” Johnny said. “Just then I feel dumb for --”

 

“Feeling dumb,” Edgar finished with him. “Yeah.”

 

Johnny collected what he needed from his bag and motioned to the tiny bathroom by the door. “I'm going to change, I guess. Get this awkward party started.”

 

“Yeah, I'll do that too,” Edgar said. “Out here, I mean.”

 

“I know.”

 

Now even just changing his own clothes in privacy was weird.

 

Television came to torment Edgar so often that Johnny sometimes forgot he'd learned a decent amount from it too. No one on TV got a hotel room without some sexy motive behind it. Johnny had never had a sexy motive in his life and planned for it to continue on in that vein for the rest of forever. Even if he suspected that television was primarily bullshit, the weight of 'they got a room together' still pressed in on him, still made him feel like peeling his own skin off.

 

Beyond the bathroom door, Edgar had turned on the television. While Johnny pulled off his clothes and shed an impressive amount of glitter, the television mumbled about some worthless celebrities and then cut to a commercial for shampoo in which a woman sounded uncomfortably and intimately enthusiastic about her soap choices. Edgar turned it down.

 

Perhaps the 'room together' weight was settling in on him too.

 

After he'd dressed, Johnny stared into the mirror where, as always now, his old selves looked blankly back at him. He stood in front of them, a scrawny kid in a shirt and pajama pants that were far too big for him, amateur makeup smeared into his pores, and a tense feeling in his chest not because Styrofoam was coming to life or he was handling a bone saw, but because he was supposed to be navigating a stay in motel room with his _boyfriend._

 

_That's what it is, isn't it? What the fuck else would I call it?_

 

The reflections said nothing, did nothing – they were reflections, after all – but their faces, their desires, their memories pressed into him, took up more space inside him that he had to give. How many Johnnys could he fit in one head before...?

 

He shook his head and clutched the bundle of his clothes to his chest.

 

_It's fine. There's always Edgar._

 

He found a towel and ran some hot water over it to at least get the fake blood and shattered glass pattern off of him, though he made no particular effort on any of the other eye makeup. He recognized himself more with dark around his eyes, even if it made him look more like the other two.

 

Beyond the door, Edgar's song floated along softly with the mind-slowing tones of the television: calming, regular, easy.

 

Which couldn't be right.

 

The notes should be trembling, shaking, unsteady, the same mess they were when Johnny and Edgar slept in the van. Unless something had changed.

 

Johnny opened the door, and the click set off ripples of uncertain notes through Edgar's song, shaking it at a core level. There it was. Despite his distinctly warm (if still baffling and somewhat alarming) feelings for Edgar, there was comfort to be found in being the least scared one.

 

Edgar sat cross-legged on his bed in much the same too-large sleep uniform as Johnny. He'd made a solid effort at removing the stitches and blood from Tenna, and his face was a little red. He smiled awkwardly and waved when he saw Johnny turn the corner.

 

“Hi.”

 

“Um, hi,” Johnny said.

 

“Sorry.” He tucked his hands down near his ankles. “I didn't know what else to do.”

 

“Neither did I. You, uh, have some shit on your neck still.”

 

Edgar reached up and ran his hand over his neck, smearing the few lines Tenna had drawn even more than they already were. He looked at the red and black it left on his fingertips and shrugged. “I'll live.”

 

Johnny dropped his clothes at the foot of his bed. “Good,” he said, trying to be casual about being locked in an uncomfortably coded 'alone time' box. “We can be filthy together.”

 

Edgar rubbed his fingers against his thumb, the makeup turning a strange gray on his fingertips. “Do you think they're okay?”

 

“It's a motel.”

 

Edgar folded his hands in his lap again and his gaze fell to the comforter. “I meant –“

 

“I know what you meant,” Johnny said. He could sit on his bed and from there talk to Edgar over the four foot chasm that separated them.

 

Or he could stop being ridiculous.

 

He sat instead on the edge of Edgar's bed. Edgar looked up at him and smiled. Tired, but relieved.

 

“I don't know why this is weird,” Johnny said. “Why _all of it_ is weird. But they'll be okay. They always are. And Tenna likes Jimmy, they'll be fine.”

 

“Yeah, but she likes _Devi_ , too. I'm worried that if we keep shuffling Jimmy around between us like he's a burden that someone is going to get resentful. Him, or Tenna, or you, or...”

 

“You.”

 

“Me,” Edgar admitted with a sigh. “I was so relieved when Tenna took him and now it's like I can't even enjoy what I didn't want him to ruin and I just feel terrible instead.”

 

“Jimmy's recovered from worse.”

 

“But I don't want to keep putting him in situations that he has to _recover_ from. I feel like I don't deserve to be sitting here.”

 

Johnny pulled his knees up onto the bed and slid back toward the pillows. “In general, or...?”

 

“Here with you. Alone. Like Tenna wanted to be with Devi.”

 

_So not existentially suicidal. Okay. Doable._

 

“So next time we trade,” Johnny said, shrugging.

 

“It could work for a little while, I guess. He's just going to start feeling... bad.”

 

Edgar was not going to be convinced with what help Johnny had to offer, at least not alone. Johnny would have preferred to handle it alone, but if he was honest, Edgar needed someone a little bit wiser and more sensitive than Johnny. They didn't know anyone like that _but_ Edgar, so an older Edgar would be more useful now. An Edgar one of his other selves remembered.

 

He'd helped Edgar with his own lifetime-old advice before. Finding memories in the others wasn't hard if he was open to it, it was just focusing on tiny specifics that was difficult. Large memories either forced their way into him or he found them through his carefully negotiated mental two-way street. Usually, he reserved this for shows, for times when his other selves helped him feel what he was saying, helped him mean it. They'd experienced the things Johnny sang about, they made the performances real. Going much deeper then general feelings took a lot of energy, but if Johnny could access memories not of murder or terror, but specific things he'd been told, other attempts the other Edgar made at helping, then he could properly help _his_ Edgar.

 

_Worth it._

 

He resisted the urge to curl up when opening this particular door. He had to concentrate a bit to access the person he'd been to then get to the memories, though it wasn't difficult to find them once he was in. The difficult part was holding so _much_ of another person up while keeping himself intact. This previous version of himself wasn't quite as bad as the first one, though that was not saying an awful lot. His sole redeeming feature seemed to be his intense fondness for his Edgar. The rest was still murder, Freezies, and tacos.

 

Johnny had become skilled at keeping the other two out, away, and down where they belonged most of the time. They'd settled into something of a working relationship since Johnny started performing, though they still fought him when he wanted them gone. They weren't malicious, really, just broken and confused and entitled and carrying visions of things that were hard to contain for any of them. If they leaked into him too much, if they had control too long, Johnny could get lost in them. It hadn't happened for very long yet, just a few seconds here and there of not feeling like his body was his, of feeling like he was falling asleep inside his own head, but even a few seconds could scare him. He'd shaken his way out before with songs, voices, his own will. Those things helped after repeated and determined application, but only Edgar brought current Johnny back without fail. Maybe this was a carry over from last time. That Edgar had tried very hard to give that Johnny some help after all, even if it was impossible for that Johnny to have really used anything he was told.

 

The other Edgar had talked him through everything that ever bothered him. Whether he did or didn't want to kill people. Whether he did or didn't want to feel anything. Whether he'd been someone before the blood started and could be that person again or if he'd ceased being who he used to be when the blood replaced art and writing. Whether people were worth effort. Whether any of that mattered.

 

When he found those conversations, he resented them and adored them and hated them and cherished them and had it all crowd to the front of his mind immediately, but it made it easier to relay the information to Edgar.

 

“We only need things to work for a little while,” Johnny said, echoing the Edgar in his head, who told him, _'You only have to try it for a while and see if you want to keep going. If not, try something else._ ' “Then we try something else. Listen, Jimmy feels as weird as you do, and he's actually self-aware enough to want to fix it too. So don't fuck yourself up over how he might feel. That's up to him.” _'You are still in there. Your decisions can all be up to you.'_

 

“I'll... try.” Shoulders hunched, rubbing the side of his hand with his other thumb.

 

“If it helps at all, I feel a lot better being here with just you.” That came from no one else. That scared him and panicked the self he was borrowing knowledge of this wisdom from.

 

Edgar did his sort of shy and defeated laughing shrug, which, while endearing, meant Johnny hadn't quite convinced him. “That does sort of help. I'm just surprised to find out I'm this selfish. I thought I'd be a little better than this.”

 

“Of everyone we know, you deserve to be selfish the most. And I'm always going to worse.” He stopped to consider the others as he slid his feet underneath the comforter. Or maybe the one he was currently allowing to leak into him forced him to consider it. “Always have been, too.”

 

“I'm not sure that part helps.”

 

Johnny gripped his ankles and leaned forward. “Okay. So what would?” _'What would help you? What can I do?'_

 

Edgar stared at him. _Recognizing this?_

 

“Are you...? Did I say this stuff to you?”

 

Johnny grinned at him. “Yeah. I mean, not _exactly_ this, but there's no way I'd be like this on my own, right? I had to learn from you. So you taught it some version of me and I'll teach it back to you.”

 

Edgar smiled back, though he still looked so weary. “I was really trying to help, wasn't I?”

 

Johnny laughed. “You had so much fucking patience!”

 

“I really was worried about you,” Edgar said, running his hand through his hair. “Even with everything that was going on, everything I must have known about, I really wanted to help.”

 

“Well, now you're helping yourself, just through me. So what's the big problem?”

 

“Uh, I can't turn off my feelings selectively?”

 

Johnny bounced in enthusiasm, a reaction barely contained from his predecessor. “I had that exact problem!”

 

“What did I tell you?”

 

Johnny sat back and his prior self screamed in frustration, desperate for control, clawing at everything to be able to converse with an Edgar who was gone. That Johnny had wanted so badly to feel nothing, but he'd worried success in that would mean losing the motivation for doing it in the first place, sending him into a cycle of feelings turning off and on.

 

Edgar's advice had not worked so well for that Johnny, but Edgar was _normal_ ; maybe his own advice would make sense to a new him. _'Maybe we should try to explore what the root of all this is. Maybe it all comes from the same source.'_

 

“You told me to look for the root of my feelings.”

 

Edgar's expression fell. “God, was I a psychologist?”

 

“I think you were scared and had once read a self-help book.”

 

Edgar's song began to pick up, the heartbeat of the thing pounding faster with every note. It reached out and began to fray and looked to connect with something, but just found empty Johnny, who could contain three whole people but not a single song.

 

“What did I even _do_ before you?” Edgar asked.

 

“Why would _I_ remember that?”

 

“Why do I only remember dying _once_?”

 

“How many more times do you need?”

 

“If you killed me the first time, but we were at the end together the second time, what killed us? How did we both die together? Did we, even?”

 

The song wanted to shake itself apart. Edgar began to look panicked, but was doing a remarkable job of keeping himself composed considering what his song felt like.

 

“Edgar.”

 

Edgar charged forward, undeterred. “Did we hurt each other or something? Like some fucked up suicide pact? Was it Pepito?”

 

Johnny reached out and grabbed Edgar's shoulders so suddenly it startled both of them. Johnny backed away slowly, both eager and reluctant to let go. _'One problem at a time. I know they feel linked, but let's see if we can separate them out.'_

 

“Focus on just your own problems for now, okay? Not the last guy's. Trust me, that is a lot easier. You keep being worried about who you are. Like the TV Guy thing, are you still worried about that? Is that related to this?”

 

“You already gave me my own wisdom for that.” His eyes were focused entirely on Johnny's hands, his gaze weighing on them, tingling Johnny's skin. Even the gloves didn't stop it.

 

“If you don't want me to fuck with it, I won't,” Johnny said. “I just wanted to help.” Had he ever just wanted to help before Edgar?

 

“I do. I'm just...”

 

“Freaking out.”

 

“Maybe that.”

 

“Jimmy has that effect on people.”

 

“It's not just him.”

 

“I know, I'm sorry. I kinda --”

 

“Jokes are your defense mechanism. I know.”

 

Johnny smiled at him. “See? We're doing okay. We know each other. You just don't know _you._ ”

 

“Just? This seems big to me.”

 

_'It's all going to seem too big at first. We just have to work on breaking it down into smaller things.'_ “So then it's big. And we make it smaller.” He untucked his legs from the death grip of Edgar's comforter and slid closer to Edgar so they were sitting facing each other, cross-legged, knees almost touching. “What do you know about you?” _'What feels like you? What is just you?'_  


“Uh, that's really broad. I play a keyboard?”

 

Old Edgar's voice was still there, being remembered twice. ' _Do you like what you're doing?'_

 

“Do you want to be here?” Johnny asked. “Doing Homicides shit? Do you like doing that?”

 

“Yeah, of course.”

 

_'Do you want to do it in the future?'_ “And do you want to keep doing that?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

_'Do you want me here?'_ “Do you... do you want to be with me?” Asking felt invasive, uncomfortable, sacrificing, distasteful. And yet he wanted the answer, even if he already knew it.

 

“Of course!”

 

“And you want to keep that up?”

 

“More than anything.”

 

It was hard to look at Edgar when he said things like that, even if Johnny liked hearing it, even if that he liked hearing it was just as uncomfortable as looking at him. He swallowed, forced his old self back a little further even as he clawed and fought to see and be present.

 

_'So there's at least something you want to have in the future.'_

 

“So that's two things you are currently doing that you want to keep doing in the future.”

 

“I guess, but they're both _you_. I'm still just The TV One.”

 

“It's not an overnight fix,” Johnny said. “The mindset takes a while to internalize, I think. It's...” ' _You won't be fixed because we talked, but you might be able to start seeing aspects of yourself a little better.'_ “Okay, how about this: Which one am I?”

 

Edgar swallowed and looked a little lost. “Um, you're not a 'one', you're Nny.”

 

Johnny laughed. “Okay, maybe we need more distance. How about Tenna? Which one is she?”

 

“The loud one?” Edgar tried.

 

“Okay. Do you think that's it? That's all Tenna, she's just loud?”

 

“Well, no...”

 

“She's also the colorful one, the crafty one, the weird one, the laid-back one, at least, right?”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

“And Devi? Just the serious one?”

 

“The artsy one. Or the quiet one. Angry one? Or the scary one.”

 

Johnny tried not to grin. “Devi is scary?”

 

Edgar nodded. “Devi is scary.”

 

He couldn't cover a smirk, but it seemed to help Edgar's mood. “Okay. Jimmy.”

 

That hit something of a snag. “The... sad one?”

 

“Or the obsessive one, or the books one, or the blog one...”

 

“Right, okay. I think I see what you're –“

 

“Me. I'll start you with 'the asshole one'.”

 

“You're not –“ He stopped when Johnny raised an eyebrow. “Well, not _totally_. Not to me. Not even to them, when it matters.”

 

Johnny waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, I'm flattered that's lovely. Don't go telling other people this shit, you'll ruin me.”

 

Edgar grinned, and both people currently in Johnny's head lit up inside. “Okay,” Edgar went on, “you're... the singing one, and sort of the leader one, and the theatrical one, and the no gender one, I guess, and...”

 

“Okay, see? This is easier to do to other people. So when I tell you you're not just the TV one, you can at least get what I'm saying conceptually, even if you don't believe it yet.”

 

“So what instead of TV? The Mom one?”

 

“God, anything. The nice one, the weirdly rational one, the only one thinking ahead ever. The voice of reason one.” _The fucking best one._

 

“Okay.” Edgar smiled. It was small, but it was promising.

 

“So you'll still be all those things even if you drop being the TV one. Or if you don't. And I'm still going to like you. You're still going to like you too, and you're still going to _be_ you.” This was so much to say and so much came from weird places. Half of it was streaming, modified, from an ex-Edgar, and half of it was coming from some kind of storm of feelings tangled inside Johnny from at least two of himself.

 

Edgar tilted his head. “Did I really say all this to you?”

 

“Some of it, kind of. The rest I'm pretty sure I'm making up.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Johnny held his hands up. “No, no, not like that! I mean I'm … extrapolating, I guess. I don't mean I'm feeding you bullshit. I know it must _sound_ like bullshit coming from _me,_ but I do want to help. I'm just using what the old you tried to say to me when I was having an identity crisis too. It's not the _same_ crisis, granted. Mine had a lot more murder.”

 

“I –“ Edgar leaned forward, and then stopped himself and rocked sadly back. “Thank you.”

 

The visual struck some dissonant tones. Parts of Johnny screamed not to react, but increasingly more numerous parts wanted nothing but. His previous self had had this same problem with Edgar, who both needed to leave and could never go away. Seeing Edgar struggling with anything triggered old panic, new fear, and the desire to tear apart everything for miles.

 

This was not on greeting cards or in movies. They'd never once found a card professing a desire to lovingly scream and slaughter things when faced with a particularly important person. Edgar's impulses and feelings for Johnny were certainly not motivated by panic and a nagging desire for mass protective homicide.

 

But Edgar had tried to stop breathing for Johnny's sake, and his heart had pounded until it exhausted him into sleep when they'd slept in the van.

 

So perhaps panic was an inherent part of this sort of thing.

 

“It's okay,” Johnny said. It came out a half second before he was ready to begin saying it. This was becoming something of a regular occurrence.

 

Edgar hesitated, because Edgar was perfect and Edgar was a problem.

 

“Really,” Johnny reassured him.

 

Edgar hugged him and pressed his face between Johnny's neck and shoulder. “You're incredible,” he said.

 

“No, you.”

 

Edgar laughed and Johnny tried not to shiver against the movement, the breath, the way one older Johnny after the other screamed in the back of his head and retreated to where he belonged. The other versions of him always wanted more of him than they were entitled to, but they couldn't contend with Edgar. Edgar was a consistent root Johnny had to his current self. Edgar had said once that their relationship – whatever they called it – was an affirmation that they were their own people, because the others hadn't done this. Seeing this Edgar, hearing him, and especially experiencing this type of feeling with him firmly established Johnny back in his own head. Edgar wasn't always needed, but it didn't hurt.

 

With the other self gone, Johnny was left a little short of breath, but undamaged. Still, he hoped Edgar wouldn't need much more of his own old wisdom.

 

Edgar pulled away and slid his hands over Johnny's arms on the way back. The sensation was pleasant, and jarring, and warm, and draining, and sweetly present and reminded him that skin existed and he was stuck in it.

 

But _Edgar._

 

“I'll be okay,” Edgar said.

 

“Tell old Doctor V we successfully used his self-help degree.”

 

“It's not a magical cure, but maybe I can convince myself, like you said.” He smiled again and it finally looked genuine. Every Johnny was pleased with it for reasons that didn't make sense and reasons that scared him. “Thank you.”

 

Johnny saluted him. “I do what I can, citizen.”

 

Edgar's smile turned into a grin and a laugh. He was hilariously good, to the point that he'd be a parody if he went even a half step further, and Johnny adored every dorky good thing he did. The more Johnny remembered, the more time passed, and the closer they got, the more Johnny expected to lose of the good and dorky Edgar, one way or another, either at the hands of change in Edgar or a complete absence of him. At what point would Edgar remember enough to run away instead of getting excited about holding hands? At what point would he want a song he could loop his own with? At what point would his TV training kick in and make him want more than Johnny could offer him? At what point beyond that would Johnny have to see him with Jimmy or Tenna instead?

 

_At what point did this begin bothering me?_

 

“Hello?”

 

Johnny gasped, though he hadn't meant to. “What?”

 

“Did you not hear me?”  


“No, sorry.”

 

“I asked if you wanted to check out their weird cable. Find a movie or infomercials or something.”

 

“Oooh, I hope we find stupid local commercials for ambiguous window services.”

 

Edgar slid next to Johnny instead of in front of him. “Is that a yes?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Johnny reclined into the giant pillows next to Edgar, who smiled sort of adoringly at him. Johnny smiled back, and, judging by Edgar's lack of extreme offense or fear, the smile looked the way it was supposed to.

 

The channels were all out of order here, there were some strange channels that Edgar's house didn't get, and the local news was completely different and yet exactly the same.

 

“Holy shit, look at that woman's hair,” Johnny said when they passed another iteration of local reporting. “It's going to devour her head.”

 

They laughed at bad graphics and overly dramatic music cues, and Johnny suggested they call and order the combination slow cooker and ice cream maker on the shopping channel. Edgar laughed with him about everything, and every time it happened, Edgar's song brightened.

 

The song was comfortable, good, _familiar_ , like it had been there all Johnny's life, even though he'd only known it a short time compared to the others.

 

It was exactly like Edgar.

 

They passed by a few repulsive holiday specials, which Edgar looked tempted to stop for, but Johnny made him pass over.

 

Finally, they landed on something that looked like a movie. There was something about the colors in a movie, or the angles, or the sets, or _something_ that separated it from 'television show' or 'the news', Johnny just didn't have the training to know _what_. Regardless, he knew a movie when he saw one. Edgar very likely had the same sense, just amplified.

 

“What is this?” Johnny asked.

 

“I'm sorry, did I neglect to clarify all this time that I don't have TV _memorized_?”

 

Johnny shoved him with his shoulder. “Ha ha. I just thought you stopped because you knew what this was.”

 

“Nope. It just looked more substantial than a game show.”

 

The scene was playing out in an airplane and Edgar sank a little deeper into his stack of pillows, ready to be absorbed in the story. Johnny, however, couldn't stop thinking about these giant tubes hurtling through the sky, filled with people who all seemed disinterested in the entire concept.

 

“Do you think airplanes are real?”

 

Edgar looked at him. “Um, you have seen them in the sky, I know you have.”

 

“Yeah, but are they like this? This big? Do they really carry people?”

 

“No one's acting like this is weird, and I don't think it's sci-fi so...”

 

“I want to try one someday, if they're real.” _Up and over._

 

“We can teach Tenna to fly and go from show to show in a private jet. Drop glitter and fake blood bombs on unsuspecting cities.”

 

Johnny put his hand on his chest. “My heart is fucking breaking because this is not the reality I live in.”

 

“We'll work on it. It's the same reality, it's just in the future.”

 

Johnny sighed and he settled back into his pillows. “Good. I think I deserve a jet.”

 

The movie panned over the passengers in the plane and began to focus in on a lone woman sitting with a laptop, eating a tiny sandwich, and trying to hold a cup of coffee on her tiny tray table all at the same time. She looked comically overworked, and just slightly awkward, but was probably pretty enough for that not to be a problem.

 

“Oh, no,” Johnny said. “If this is a comedy about how this workaholic woman just can't find love, we are burning the building down and changing the channel.”

 

“In that order?”

 

“Yeah, fight me.”

 

“I think we're supposed to know who this woman is already,” Edgar said. “We might be too far into this to actually enjoy it.”

 

“Okay,” Johnny said. “Then we'll have fun with this instead.” He reached over Edgar and grabbed the remote, sending Edgar's song into momentary spike.

 

“What are you doing?” Edgar asked just as Johnny hit the mute button.

 

“We don't know what the fuck is going on, so we might as well make up the dialog ourselves. It'll make about as much sense as what's actually playing.”

 

Edgar looked between Johnny and the television a few times and then laughed. He had a particular laugh for when something pleasantly surprised him, and it was by far his best one. His previous selves recoiled from the idea that Johnny knew things like this _and_ enjoyed them, and yet he was certain that his immediate predecessor knew and had fun with this same information.

 

Johnny wiggled the remote between his fingers. “Yes?”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

The overworked woman in the plane quickly became so because she was frustrated that her attempts to bring about the reign of some ambiguous dark lords had failed. Edgar added that the reason was that the proper permits for resurrection were being held up with zoning paperwork.

 

Johnny laughed against his shoulder at the thought of the demonic destruction of humanity needing to go through red tape and clearances, which sent Edgar's song swirling and very nearly turned it several colors. “What the fuck is zoning?”

 

“God, I – I learned it from Dib when we were looking at Pepito's house. I guess when you build shit, you have to have permits to make certain things in certain areas and Dib thought maybe the place had been zoned as a nuclear dump or something once.”

 

“Next to a school.”

 

“Would it surprise you, though? It's Dib, I don't know. I didn't ask. I just let him do what he wanted and if I stood there and nodded or asked a question he felt like I was helping.”

 

“Was it?”

 

“Nuclear waste? No.”

 

“Aww.”

 

“I know, I was kind of sad, too.”

 

If he could help smiling, he'd stop, but Edgar made it damn near impossible. “This is why I like you.”

 

“I'll remember that.”

 

Their movie continued and then ended long before they were ready to give up the soul sucking evil paperwork narrative, so they carried it into the commercials and even the next movie, which was some kind of martial arts adventure.

 

Johnny laughed harder than he expected when the first guy with spinning legs and a bandana flew into frame, and Edgar noticed.

 

“What? What's so funny?”

 

“God, you weren't here for that, I keep forgetting.”

 

“What? What was it?”

 

“So Jimmy had this karate phase. He was really into people fighting but he was trying to learn it from these movies and this old fucking book he found in the library – it was literally yellow and falling apart – and he would just flail around with this book open in front of him for like two hours a day, it was just the most painful thing to look at.”

 

“Oh my god. Did he try it on you guys?”

 

“Fuck, he used to try to threaten us when we teased him. He did this thing with his hands when he was really mad, it – I can't believe you haven't seen this. I can't believe he doesn't do it anymore, wow.” He rolled to one side to try to face Edgar better and demonstrate Jimmy's fighting cobra whatever nonsense, but found that all motivation to stand up and make fun of Jimmy vanished when he was looming slightly over Edgar.

 

They made what should have naturally been the most fleeting of eye-contact before Johnny launched into his demonstration, but he was just held there. Edgar gazed at him like he was seeing something new, his interest in laughing at Jimmy also seemingly evaporated. Johnny's very first thought was to panic and run, flashing Jimmy's television karate hands as he went, but it was overtaken by an immense fondness for Edgar that made his heart race just as much as running would have. He'd been surprised to discover he had the capability for fondness for anyone beyond 'you are my friend and it would be convenient if you didn't die.' That it was inspired by a random dork who walked into their group a few years late and it still persisted and continued to get _worse_ surprised him even more.

 

What struck Johnny at this moment was that Edgar looked equal parts terrified and enchanted and that was _exactly_ the combination of feelings Johnny held for Edgar.

 

Edgar stared into Johnny with slow wonder and anxious joy. Terrifying. Kind of wonderful. Edgar raised a hand and brought it close to Johnny's jaw, though even in this moment did not touch him.

 

“May I?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Edgar didn't explain what he wanted – he'd hardly even made a sound saying those two words – and yet Johnny completely trusted that when Edgar gently pulled his face closer and kissed him, that that would be all he'd do.

 

And it was 'all', if that could be used to describe it. Johnny had been overwhelmed with the desire to kiss Edgar the first time it happened, but it had been charged with so much fear, tension, relief, panic that Johnny didn't have the capacity to process at the time. He'd barely known what he was doing. Now, they were wrapped in pillows and loose t-shirts and a dumb movie and if he was overwhelmed, it was only for a few seconds, and it was made of something entirely different than the first time.

 

Edgar hummed contentedly into the kiss and Johnny felt every vibration, every sound, every note of what Edgar felt. It was frightening, it was alarming, it tried to reach into Johnny and crush him.

 

But it was Edgar.

 

Johnny braced himself with his hands above Edgar's shoulders and pulled himself up and away from the kiss, though he didn't make it far. Edgar looked up at him and Johnny considered the possibility the world had frozen in place just a few inches from Edgar's face.

 

“Wow,” Edgar whispered.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Would you...” Edgar swallowed and licked his lip. His hand settled cautiously on Johnny's ribs. “Sorry, would you mind one more?”

 

Johnny let his arms relax and he sank against the dork with glasses who just showed up one day claiming to remember him. Very happily, if not quite as passionately, kissed the guy who played music to make Johnny happy. Slowly and gently broke the kiss with the scared invisible kid who was more certain of his feelings for Johnny than his own identity.

 

“I wouldn't mind,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar laughed quietly. “Sorry, you're just – God, I don't know if you like this sort of thing, but you're really beautiful.”

 

Johnny laughed at him, though not to mock him. “Thanks, I guess?” He pushed himself away from Edgar so he was beside him instead of half on top. “I think that's kinda ridiculous, but I'm not going to fight you about it or anything.”

 

“Why is it ridiculous?”

 

“It's just not how I see myself.”

 

Edgar shifted to his side and propped his head up on his arm to look at Johnny. “How do you, then?”

 

“I just kind of am. I don't think I'm great to look at but it's not terrible either. I'm kinda weird looking maybe? I just feel kinda like I have a face and that's okay with me.” He shrugged. “Though I guess I'm doing better than the other two.”

 

“You are.”

 

Johnny gave him a thumbs up, at something of a loss for how else to react. It didn't matter what Johnny did, it made Edgar smile.

 

“Sorry,” Edgar said. “I just really wanted to say so, especially with...”

 

“It's okay. Don't be sorry. I just think it's funny.”

 

“Well, I wasn't aiming for funny, but I'll take anything that isn't 'uncomfortable'.”

 

“I suspect you are incapable of making people uncomfortable.”

 

“So we're a good idea together, then.”

 

_For so many reasons beyond this. No matter how the other two feel about it._ “Yeah.”

 

Edgar settled back into the pillows. “I want to make you happy.”

 

“You do.”

 

Edgar glanced at him. “I mean in some kind of big way. Like all the time.”

 

Johnny took a deep breath and slid closer to him. Edgar somewhat cautiously moved his arm, inviting Johnny even closer.

 

_I think I can do that._

 

“Do you think 'happy' is like a grand finale?” Johnny asked, hoping the questions would distract his own brain from the physicality of his head on Edgar's chest and Edgar's arm around him.

 

Edgar bit his lip. “...Maybe. I guess TV doesn't usually go beyond people getting married or something.”

 

“I don't think it works like that in real life, even ours. It's probably harder to make one person happy for a long time than TV makes it look. The movies all look like one thing, but the news looks like something else, you know?”

 

“I guess I didn't think about it that far ahead.” Edgar's voice echoed in his chest and his song swirled around Johnny from all sides. “I just want us to be okay, and I want us to be... us.”

 

“Well, until you, I've never found the concept of 'us' appealing.” Johnny said. There was a twist in his chest even saying that, and yet he still went further. “But I could be 'us' with you.”

 

Edgar kissed his head somewhere in his hair and hugged him tighter for a few seconds. Johnny's muscles seized up and he nearly dug his fingers into Edgar's flesh instead of his shirt. Edgar hurried to move his arm away and release Johnny entirely.

 

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I thought it was okay. I was just - I got carried away.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “It's okay.” _It was too much right then, but might not always be._ “You just startled me.”

 

“You can get up, I don't mean to keep you here.”

 

He could easily get up and be in the other bed and not contend with another person's limbs and breathing and hands and existing, but Johnny wanted nothing as badly as he wanted Edgar to exist.

 

“No, I'll...” There really wasn't a way to change the end of that sentence now that it had come out. “I'll stay here.”

 

Edgar grinned at him and clearly had to restrain another hug and head kiss combo.

 

“This is exactly what I imagined.”

 

It took a few moments to process what Edgar had said. “Which part?”

 

Edgar sighed serenely, the sound enormous in his lungs. “When I imagined getting to sleep with you, like I told you in the van. Big pillows, you right here, something on TV.”

 

Edgar had never lied about it before, at least not to Johnny's knowledge, but it was still so innocent it didn't seem real. “Really?”

 

“Yeah, what else?”

 

“You've seen the same TV I have, haven't you?” _He couldn't possibly be like this, he can't just be perfect for no reason._

 

“Yeah. But this is what I imagined anyway. This is what I wanted.”

 

And yet Edgar persisted with 'perfect'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their lives were a blur, and not in the way they used to be. Everywhere they went, new people saw them and, thanks to Jimmy's dedication to the blog, old people found them again. Part of the fun of repeat viewers was people who brought friends that hadn't experienced it yet. Then the Homicides watched both the new person react to suddenly seeing them and the reaction of the excited friend.

 

Johnny sang on rooftops, in streets, garages, warehouses, and churches that did not cause him to burst into flame. He was proud, terrifying, prophetic, challenging, and Edgar wanted to remember every second only so he could be adequately prepared for the next second to come.

 

Johnny was fearless when he sang. This whole thing should have been absurd, but there was Johnny: clever, sharp, quick, persuasive, unsettling, and beautiful, making this strange idea wonderful even dressed in the glittery trappings of an event that had once ended Edgar's life. It wasn't as though he'd forgotten about being killed – the moment interrupted his thoughts just often enough that he felt it was being re-planted on purpose – but he was determined to separate the Johnny he knew from the ones he remembered, even if Johnny was pretending to be the others when he performed. Johnny remained enchanting to everyone, no matter what they remembered about him, and the feeling never lessened, never went away.

 

Part of Johnny's charm was rooted in what he was singing, and while the band had a healthy collection of other people's songs to perform, the bit of Johnny's rain song that had been posted to Dib's blog caused a surge of demand for more new material both from inside and outside the band unit.

 

It was Johnny writing them most often, but the others contributed to songs too, and the time they spent creating together contained the same infectious united energy Edgar used to feel when they had dance parties in the choir room. Performing, making, or enjoying music, this was how he was connected to them.

 

Johnny wrote his songs from the notebook he so often used to converse with Edgar, lifting lyrics from the streams of paragraphs he'd slowly been letting Edgar see. Tenna and Jimmy made things up on the fly, usually silly rhymes that lightened the mood of Johnny and Devi's heavier and creepier words but still with the Homicides' preferred twisted subject matter. Edgar wrote slowly most of the time, sometimes afraid to be personal, sometimes afraid there was no such thing for him. Every so often, Johnny would drag lyrics out of him in a conversation without him realizing, and thus they wrote together with Johnny smugly smiling through the entire process.

 

One night, Edgar sat with the others in their group motel room repairing loose hems and torn sleeves while Johnny sat on the floor, singing through bits of a song Jimmy and Tenna were writing for him to do at their next show. Edgar sat on one bed with sewing work in his lap while Devi was reading on her stomach on the other.

 

“We're gonna have you do this one after Rain,” Tenna said after Johnny had sung through what they had already.

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “Are you now?”

 

“Yeah, we outnumber you and you'll look like a complete fuck if they play a song and you're not singing it.”

 

“It's a good idea,” Edgar said, pulling his thread tight. “People won't know what to expect of us between those two songs.”

 

Jimmy grinned. “Exactly. They like this sort of thing.”

 

Devi looked up from the magazine she'd stolen from the lobby. “What made you the expert on the Dib People? Shouldn't that be Edgar? He's the one who used to actually read the Loch Ness Monster garbage.”

 

“Hey, my Loch Ness Monster garbage means that the guy with the giant blog trusts us.” He shrugged, happy to have sewing to focus on. “Besides, it's not like I believed any of it, I just think it's fun.”

 

“Okay, whatever! Focus, people!” Tenna shouted, flapping her hands. “We need to think of more ways to die.”

 

“Listening to you people do this,” Devi said.

 

Jimmy and Tenna made identical mocking faces at her, and Edgar snickered, earning him just as much of a glare from Devi as the other two.

 

“Spider bite, I guess,” Johnny said, ignoring Devi.

 

Jimmy reached forward and flailed at Tenna. “Oh, oh, kite! The guy with the kite,” he said. “Fuck, what's his name?”

 

Tenna shook her head.

 

“Is death by kite common?” Edgar asked. “I didn't realize I had to be afraid of that.”

 

Jimmy sat with his hand on his head, trying to recall details. “No, he didn't die, but he should have; he was getting struck by lightning.”

 

Johnny leaned away from him. “Franklin?”

 

“Yes!”

 

Tenna whistled in appreciation. “You actually know what he's talking about?”

 

Johnny shook his head in dismay. “Yeah. It's a long story.”

 

Devi was still not impressed. “You're going to work some random man not dying by kite into a song about Edgar's t-shirt?”

 

Tenna rolled her eyes dramatically. “It's _inspired by_ Edgar's t-shirt. Get with it, Devi.”

 

“And he'll die,” Jimmy said. “Or... someone will. It's ambiguous. Everyone dies. It's fun.”

 

“Right,” Devi said, and turned another page of her magazine.

 

Jimmy wrote down suggested lyrics and Johnny leaned over the notepad, chanting lyrics and trying to count things out with Jimmy at the same time.

 

_“Aren't I so lucky,_

_To be here?”_

 

Edgar sighed. “I hate that you guys are doing this while I'm holding a needle. My hands want to play, not sew a shirt.”

 

“We're going to need you in a minute,” Johnny said. “You're going to fake some shit for us in this one.”

 

“That is literally my job description on the blog.”

 

Johnny grinned at him. “You're good at it. It's like audio lying.”

 

Tenna poked at Jimmy's scribbling. “Are people going to get that? Being shocked by a kite? Can you word it another way?”

 

“Nny knew the story,” Jimmy defended.

 

“Yeah, but that dude didn't die,” Tenna said. “It's not really an obvious death reference.”

 

“Would it help if we just had some thunder or something play at that point?” Edgar asked. “That way people know we mean a storm and not that it's a critical quality of kites that they murder people.”

 

Johnny lightly clapped his hands. “Oooh, we get to use the sound effects function!”

 

“I'm a fucking professional,” Edgar said, faking deep pride.

 

Johnny replied with, “You're perfect,” so casually and so precisely in tune with a conversation about making a song that the others hardly reacted. Edgar nearly stabbed himself in the thumb.

 

“This is a lot of fuss for a joke song,” Devi said.

 

Johnny didn't even look up at her. “You should take fun just as seriously as work.”

 

“No half-assing it,” Jimmy said.

 

Tenna beamed at Devi, who was finally starting to smile. “Whole ass only beyond this point.”

 

Devi threw the magazine at her and laughed.

 

 

 

 

 

The first time someone other then Devi took their picture, it was almost laughable.

 

 

_“Make you up, take you out_  
  
_play it up to bring you down_

_take the time to make this last”_

 

 

It was for a small indie magazine, and it should have been a unique and exciting experience, but photos taken by someone else – someone outside – didn't count. They were a little haunting, if Edgar was honest about them. Until someone else's fancy camera took a photo of him and his friends, he had almost believed that Devi's camera had only been able take photos of them because it belonged to her.

 

They retook the photos several times while the photographer complained that there were ghosts of Edgar and Johnny no matter how they adjusted lights and angles. It was finally decided they'd be adjusted 'in post.' No one in the band commented on it, though Johnny's snickering was obviously hard to restrain. He considered the extra work appropriate punishment for people telling him how to pose.

 

Jimmy was only skeptical of the theme, which had them all lying on the floor in slightly modified elegant formal wear plus their usual makeup. He told Tenna they looked like 'some kinda formal homicidal orgy.' Edgar hadn't objected to the theme at all; he was a little more distracted by Johnny in a well-fitting suit and coat they could never have obtained in a thrift store at home. As a bonus, he now had photos of it, thematically appropriate or not.

 

“ _Spin the wheel, watch it crash_

_turn the dress to broken glass_

_strike a pose and hold the flash”_

 

Not only was it novel that someone else could take a photo, it was even weirder that people wanted to. Edgar hadn't expected pictures, or questions, or fans, or for anyone at all to care about what they were doing after they'd seen it. Most of the time, Edgar didn't even know _what_ they were doing. Being seen, he supposed, but without a real end goal. They had no purpose but to say they could be, had been. Even as Jimmy flirted with the entire camera crew, he knew – they all knew – that there was no one out there who would make sense to them. Even if Jimmy took someone back with him to the motel (and he didn't), that person would never be one of them, no matter how long they stayed. This was it.

 

“ _I'm not the only on who's bleeding_

_before the past is done repeating”_

 

Tenna loved talking to people about what they were doing, but she'd always been the one who _could._ And even she was not great at it. The others hadn't developed a taste for conversation with people who didn't understand and often didn't know how to respond to being visible and concrete in crowded rooms. There was no safety in a room full of people with questions, no ability to melt into the walls. Johnny dealt with it the worst and outright shut down people who pushed him beyond the limits of his ability or desire to pretend. The others at least tried.

 

“ _gets underneath my skin, it won't die_

_this time if I can't win”_

 

Truthfully, if it wasn't for Johnny, it may have become a little boring.

 

“ _Then I won't try to carry on_

_I'll play it satirical”_

 

Johnny pushed limits and tested boundaries. Johnny had ideas that caused arguments and did things that scared people, Edgar included. He wanted to symbolically kill the others in a performance by cutting their instruments off one by one (even though they didn't have a set up that would make that as dramatic as it evidently was in his head), and it was several hours before the others could handle the idea. When people were paying them for interviews or photos, he wanted to use the money to get black out contact lenses for everyone, and he asked Tenna about how well real blood would mix with the makeup. They could bleed on every venue they used, he said, so even if no one saw them, they would be noticed. The ideas he had weren't the problem – they were things the group would usually embrace – it was the sudden ferocious enthusiasm behind them.

 

“ _tonight won't be so long_

_I'll pray for a miracle”_

 

After the initial interview for Dib, Johnny refused to break character unless alone with the rest of the group. Everyone who tried to get any other information beyond the scraps Jimmy offered on the Homicides' blog always met aggressively with the Johnny who sang of blood and concrete and not the one who talked to Edgar in a notebook and sang girly pop songs with Tenna.

 

What happened until Johnny grew tired of them and became hostile was a game, just like the one he'd played in the interview with Dib that had launched all this. Sharp, quick answers delivered like they were perfectly rehearsed, like he didn't have to make the persona.

 

“ _Wake you up, pull you out_

_talk you up to calm you down_

_turn it up and scream and shout”_

 

“So what inspired this whole look?” some indie magazine writer asked.

 

“Real life,” Johnny said.

 

“In what way?”

 

“I actually murdered all my friends and now we play music in Hell. When you see us, it's a glitch of reality.”

 

“That's a great story, who came up with it?”

 

“A guy named Pepito.”

 

“And how much is your stage persona like the real you?”

 

“Exactly. I murder everything I love.”

 

“ _Make you tired, wear you out_

_Shut you up and turn you off_

_Clean you up and take you home”_

 

He did the same thing on the blog, no matter how the questions were worded. He was frustrated by the constant focus on relationships between people in the band and repeatedly made sure the others knew not to answer a single one. As much as the real Johnny had grown comfortably into his relationship with Edgar to the point where they were in near constant physical contact, the Johnny on stage had only a twisted kind of distant fondness for his victims. He pulled at them and teased them, but he did the same to the audience. Everyone was Johnny's puppet and everything was an act.

 

“ _I'm not the only one who's bleeding_

_Before the past is done repeating_

_Gets underneath my skin, it won't die_

_This time if I can't win...”_

 

And during all this, Johnny never collapsed at random, never passed out, never suddenly started screaming about his head. These attacks had shut Johnny down before, and now he was so in charge of his own life that he looked to be in charge of several other people's as well. He still had trouble with static and other white noise, and he often complained of hearing songs that no one else could, but he looked to be otherwise stable. He spent all time that wasn't performing attached to Edgar in some fashion. The others hadn't dared comment on it in front of him, but Tenna brought it up privately once, asking what Edgar had done to cause such a shift.

 

“ _Then I won't try to carry on_

_I'll play it satirical_

_Tonight won't be so long_

_I'll pray for miracle”_

 

Edgar told her they'd watched a movie about zoning laws.

 

 

 

 

Despite being popular with the Big Foot set (whether it was for what they did or how they did it), the Homicides still faced needing to sneak into places, improvise, or scare someone into seeing them to have shows of any kind. If they weren't expected – and they assumed they never would be – it was hard to get what they needed to be more than screaming kids.

 

Tenna came up with the idea of being their hook into the visible world and tried to reserve spaces in real places for them. It took several tries to get a venue to accept a band they couldn't see and who they couldn't even be sure their customers would see. She went in with photos, video extracted from Dib's camera on Edgar's neck, and Jimmy's archive of articles and blog posts, and finally this convinced a tiny club owner to let the Homicides take up space on their stage. Late at night. After the main act.

 

They advertised their first planned show on the blog, and Dib's people reacted in a flurry; they organized car pools and arranged meetings to compare readings and others just lamented that they were too far away and would kill to be there.

 

Johnny looked through the messages with obvious disgust. “Some of these people are the same age as us, but they feel like goddamn aliens.”

 

Devi shrugged. “They're either goths or Dib's people, so either way, they'd probably identify with being called that.”

 

“What were you expecting?” Edgar asked, looking over the long string of 'lol's and exclamation marks.

 

“Someone it wouldn't sicken me to talk to, I don't know. Even if they'll never understand, I thought there might be someone to talk to who didn't make me weigh the experience of their company unfavorably against stabbing myself in the face. Damn me and my optimism. Ever since you, the quality of my acquaintances has really hit a steady decline.”

 

 

 

 

They'd been granted space on the stage after a headlining act had finished for the night, presumably so the venue didn't lose money on them in any possible way. Johnny didn't care. He stepped onto the stage like it belonged to him and screamed into the microphone to the already drunk and deaf audience. Most reacted like startled and bewildered cattle and a few, presumably people who had seen them once before and were coming to see them again thanks to Dib's blog, applauded.

 

Johnny laughed against the microphone in the thick fog of the room and the glitter on his skin caught the purple light around them. This was how they should be seen. This light and the fog highlighted Tenna's work and gave it some camouflaging atmosphere at the same time.

 

While the others set up behind him, Johnny chose to talk to the people in the room that could see him.

 

“Dib sent you, did he?”

 

There were a few 'whoo's in response.

 

“Well, if that's all I'm going to get from you, I don't know why I'm up here.”

 

They 'whoo'd a little louder.

 

“You're going to have to get the rest of these dumb fucks to see us if this is going to be even remotely worth my time and effort,” he told them, pointing to the clusters of confused people in the rest of the room. “I'm told you people are supposed to be smart, so all you have to do is get some drunk assholes to see a bunch of dead people. I hear they do this on their own sometimes, so honestly I'm asking very little here. Do you think you can handle this?”

 

The 'whoo's of approval were accompanied by some general screaming and applauding. Johnny shook his head and turned around to check on the others. It was mundane and he wasn't acting at all, but framed by purple fog and covered in glittery blood, he made Edgar's heart skip. Jimmy had the same problem if the strangled noise he made was any indication.

 

“How are we?” Johnny asked.

 

Jimmy coughed and his voice squeaked. “Good, I think.” His guitar echoed through the building the way Johnny's voice had.

 

Edgar tried the same when the last cord was plugged in and was surprised to hear it sound so big and so real.

 

Johnny continued to play with the audience, to tease them and make silly demands while the others made sure they were as ready as they could be. Then, perhaps not even expecting the others to join him, Johnny quietly and slowly sang the first verse of the song Dib had shared a clip of.

 

“ _it seeps through the ground_

_it creeps through the sky_

_feel it in your bones_

_long before it burns your eyes”_

 

The words slid down the walls and twisted their way through the small crowd like smoke. Edgar added a few critical notes just as Johnny's voice faded from the room. The crowd who could see them already stood frozen for a few moments and then rushed to attract the attention of the remaining stragglers from the main show.

 

Johnny glanced back at the others, who all nodded. Ready.

 

They started the song properly with Johnny devilishly grinning his way through the intro before starting in on the opening verse again.

 

The environment changed how this felt. With the fog and lights enhancing and hiding them and the room amplifying every feeling they put into the performance, they only had to finish a single chorus to know this was how they should be seen, this was how they should be.

 

“ _it's gonna rain_

_it's gonna burn_

_it's gonna melt_

_it's gonna turn_

_the roads to tar_

_the trees to ash_

_there is no way we're going back”_

 

The rest of the crowd began to see, began to hear, began to understand. So many of them were drunk they probably wouldn't recall what happened during the show as real, but their reactions were still exciting, hilarious, motivating. The more excited the people watching, the stronger the Homicides became.

 

The final notes of 'rain' dissolved around them and were replaced by the small but very enthusiastic applause from the little crowd. Johnny grinned at them and bowed, one hand held habitually over the key on his neck. “Looks like you people are alive after all,” he said.

 

They cheered in return, far louder than they had at the start.

 

“Aww, that's so much better,” he told them. “We're going to get along. Though I have something of an unfortunate history with the people I get along with.”

 

He laughed and motioned to Edgar and the others by way of example. Edgar nodded , Devi stuck her tongue out, Jimmy waved and the audience cheered for them too. The laughter came out of Edgar before he had a single thought about protecting the dead guy image, but Johnny didn't seem to mind.

 

“Anyway, since we're all going to get along so much, we brought something you can try to sing with us.”

Tenna laughed and clapped like a seal from off stage.

 

Johnny made a face at her before letting the others know he was ready. Edgar caught her flashing them two thumbs up and grinning wildly.

 

“You guys are gonna pick up on a pattern here real quick,” Johnny said as the others began the song. “I suggest you clap like you mean it or something.”

 

 

_“Aren't I so lucky,_

_To be here?_   
_Aren't I so lucky?_   
_There's nothing to fear cuz”_

  


_All of my friends are dead_   
_A space rock crushed all of their heads!_   
_Lalalalalalala_   
_They splattered the town with red!_

  


 

This was of course the song Edgar now had several pre-made settings for, so while everyone else was having a fun, simple time with what was mostly Jimmy and Tenna's spontaneous motel idea, Edgar was wishing for four hands. Even if he automated a few parts, he had to time turning them off at the right time.

 

  


_“I can't believe I'm not dead!_   
_With all blood that I've bled,_   
_I could paint too_   
_Just me and you”_

  


Edgar thought he detected the slightest motion toward him on the last line, though he didn't have time to indulge in the idea.

  


Tenna chimed in from off stage, “ _Now that's the right attitude!_ ,” earning a small laugh from Johnny.

  


_“Aren't I so lucky_   
_To witness_   
_A scene, oh so bloody_   
_Of course, there's more to this!_

  


_All of my friends are dead!_   
_Their lives were hung from thin threads._   
_Lalalalalalala”_

  


Tenna returned, the disembodied voice of observation, _“_ _I swear there was poison in that bread!”_

  


Edgar's heart jumped a little and he readied his extras, the crunching, the scuttling, the thunder...

  


_“Fell from a height._

_A new spider bite._

_A shock from a kite._

_The fire's too bright!_

_A bump in the night!_

_It all went to white!”_

  


_“Oh, what a sight!”_

  


...which all succeeded so well he almost burst into laughter. He wouldn't have been alone. Tenna was laughing off stage and Johnny hadn't even started this one with a straight face.

  


_“All my friends are dead!_   
_"I think you are too," they said._   
_Lalalalalalala_   
_What a wonderful life I've lead!”_

  
They took the music down for the final lines, so Johnny was supported by only whispers of the instruments behind him.

  


_“If you don't think it's true,_   
_Then we'll come right after you..._

  
_Oh, leaving so soon?”_

  


  


Johnny's voice faded into the audience laughing and cheering and Johnny took a single step forward, smiling and very nearly laughing. He moved to take one more step and seized up like he was hit with a jolt. He shook it off quickly and gave the audience a laughing bow, but he turned back to the others without really basking in it.

 

“Do you guys hear –?” He put a hand over one ear and flinched. “Nevermind.”

 

“What's going on?” Devi asked.

 

Johnny looked off stage toward Tenna but apparently didn't find what he was looking for.

 

“There's a voice,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar sat up straighter. “Are you okay?”

 

“Guys?” Jimmy said. “We can't do this too much. There are people.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “It's okay, it's okay. I'll worry about it later, I just thought she... Nevermind.”

 

He turned back to the audience before the others could say much more, and showed no indication anything was wrong.

 

Talking to the audience hadn't been something the others expected of Johnny, but he seemed to enjoy doing it an awful lot for someone who usually complained about how much he didn't like people outside his group. He told them they'd get one more song out of him for the night, and looked back at Edgar.

 

“Back to the start,” he said.

 

They'd had several starts, and all of them had had a song attached. There was no way Johnny didn't know this. Rather than stick to the original song they'd planned on, Johnny was handing the song selection to Edgar, who decided the start of the Homicides was the most appropriate start for the situation. He mouthed the title to Devi and Jimmy, who both smiled at him, and started them off.

 

The drunks and Dib's people hadn't seen this one before, and erupted with enthusiasm for it.

 

 

_“ Welcome to the lower birth_   
_The greatest show unearthed!_   
_We appear without a sound_   
_The darkest show around”_

_“We will leave you in a daze_   
_Madness, murder, dismay_   
_We will disappear at night_   
_With blood on the concrete”_

 

The rest of the song passed in a delirious blur, with joyous power seeping from every note. They extended the final strains of the song far beyond their original intent to the cheers of the little crowd and again Edgar marveled that he hadn't had to speak a single word to Devi and Jimmy to have them contribute to what he was doing.

 

Johnny called out a 'Good night, Dib People!' though it was doubtful many people heard him.

 

The lights around the audience went up to begin herding them outside, toward the rest of the world and the merchandise tables. Edgar watched Johnny give the audience one last bow before the stage lights went out. He paused, relishing the moment, steady and quiet.

 

Behind him, Tenna ran out hugged Devi, who had jumped up to meet her. Jimmy stood like Edgar, watching Johnny, until Tenna tackled Jimmy from behind, shrieking his name.

 

Still standing at the edge of the stage, Johnny closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked at Edgar, gave him a strange smile, and then looked properly out of breath.

 

“Edgar! Nny!” Tenna called. “Come on, losers, there's food in the back room! They have a tiny fridge!”

 

She hung between Devi and Jimmy, her arms draped over their shoulders as they descended beyond the curtain.

 

“Coming!” Edgar called after them. They'd be back to take everything apart, but going down to celebrate now seemed far more important. Plus, Johnny seemed to want a moment by himself.

 

Edgar got just behind the curtain, though still technically on stage before he heard Johnny snickering with glee. He ran to Edgar a second later and jumped up to throw his arms around Edgar's neck. Edgar just barely caught him and held him up off the floor. Johnny, still out of breath, laughed like he was delirious.

 

“That was fucking fantastic!” Johnny shrieked.

 

“I know!”

 

He hugged Edgar a little tighter. As enchanting as stage Johnny was, this Johnny was what Edgar adored most – full of enthusiasm and and covered in glitter because it was fun.

“You were perfect,” Edgar whispered near his ear before setting him down.

 

Johnny grinned but looked away. “No, I'd have to say that was you,” he said. “We'll see about me.”

 

Edgar laughed and stepped away from him before the others came back and saw them being too close. Johnny nodded in gratitude and Edgar moved the curtain aside for him. Tenna ran to them when they walked through, three chocolate churros in one hand and a can of something that hit Edgar's back like ice when she hugged him in the other.

 

 

 

They were paid for the show, which Tenna had forgotten would happen. She expressed some dismay that they couldn't open a bank account as people who didn't exist in more than a school computer, and then immediately frowned even harder. “I am so sorry, that is the most adult thing I've ever said and I am frankly appalled. I promise it won't happen again.”

 

Johnny laughed and despite the makeup meant to make him look close to death if not beyond it, he made Edgar feel alive.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are actually descending back into territory covered by the original SWAN again, can you believe it? We only took like a 10 chapter detour. Someday, when I have so much more time, I want to re-draw the Formal Homicidal Orgy image to suit how I think it was photographed this time, but it felt important to reference it again here, ja? It's iconic, haha. 
> 
> There is a lot, again, of little stuff between these people this time around. Worry about personal identity and defining selves and relationships and all that. I live for that shit and I think it's particularly important for these kids, so I do a lot of it. Johnny and Edgar are a personal Extreme Big Deal to me, but Jimmy keeps asserting himself too, so it's permeating into everything. I like the idea that their interpersonal problems are just as important to them as them knowing the Anti-Christ and remembering murder, so I like to treat it that way. They're 17-19 years old, so they can be as dramatic as they want. There's still some strange other plot shit trickling in even now, though, and we're going to see more strange soon, as those of you who have read the original should be guessing.
> 
> Songs this time are: 
> 
> The Birthday Massacre - Science (can I avoid using every song they have ever made? Barely. But it was Important to use this one.)  
> Ida Maria - Oh My God (I have nothing clever to say about this, it's just fun)  
> Patrick Wolf - Hard Times (please watch the video on YouTube, I think about it in relation to Johnny A Lot)  
> Scissor Sisters - I Can't Decide (I had this one on repeat the week I decided to rewrite this story, so I felt it should have a place somewhere)  
> and a bit of the opening to Creature Feature's Greatest Show Unearthed, which I featured a few chapters ago
> 
>  
> 
> Non-Appearing-In-Our-Universe Songs include snippets of Jimmy's song here and there, the Homicides' 'rain' from last time, and 'All My Friends are Dead', which was written by my friend Gu (http://thegukid.tumblr.com/) for this silly project. I figured if I got other people to write the inner songs of these kids for the first version, I could have friends who were connected to this story to write some of the songs they sing since that was an added feature to the story this time around!


	22. mind is willing, soul remains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny has some trouble with blood, girly sing-a-longs, and being possessed by his own head.

Tenna's amusement with money continued when she realized they could charge for interviews. They didn't care who wanted them, as long as they were willing to pay. Music blogs, weird underground zines, even a small town local paper slightly convinced they were Satanic. Tenna arranged all of them and handled money matters since she was always reliably contactable. (“Guys, I think I might be your accidental manager. This adult shit keeps happening to me, I'm really sorry, I don't know what I'm doing to cause this.”)

 

Devi actively disliked doing interviews. Johnny claimed the same, though the moment he made eye contact with an interviewer after their first question it was a different story, and the others watched him delightedly twist and toy with the people asking questions like he'd been manipulating people all his life. No one wanted to be the person to ask out loud if he had been.

 

The only snags in this process came when the interviewer wouldn't accept Johnny the way he was.  He'd never encountered anyone who didn't just shrug and say 'okay' when he made statements about his own gender and he quickly became angry with people who called him 'the male vocalist' or 'the boy at the head of a new underground craze.'

 

“I'm not a boy,” was usually met with “Sorry, 'young man',” which served to make him even angrier.

 

He spent time and energy explaining it at first, but after a while, he dismissed any interviewer who didn't accept what he said after the first correction.

 

“We're done, goodnight,” he'd tell them, jumping down from whatever bar stool, couch arm, or counter top he was perched on.

 

The interviewers would laugh, and then when the rest of the band followed Johnny, they'd start panicking or getting angry.

 

“This is unprofessional! You can't disrespect people like this and expect to get anywhere!”

 

Usually, he'd laugh, say 'Watch me,' and keep walking.  But after the last incident, Johnny stopped and walked calmly back to the frowning twenty-something in tight jeans and a newsie cap.

 

“I can do anything I want. You think this is a fucking joke, don't you? You wanted to ask me about magic tricks, right? Smoke and fucking mirrors? There aren't any. Unless you see me perform with these people, I'm invisible. There are no records of me, I wasn't born, I just am. Yet we haven't murdered anyone, we usually just steal bags of chips. I'm not interested in changing things up for you, but I could do it, and unless your local police have interesting taste in music, no one could fucking prove it was me.”

 

“Are you... threatening me?”

 

“It concerns me that you need to ask that question. Tell your silly magazine to come back when they have someone who doesn't presume to challenge my own definitions of my existence. Have a nice fucking night.”

 

He turned away from the interviewer and strolled back to the others like he hadn't just threatened to harm someone and happily mentioned pizza to Edgar when they were out of earshot. Jimmy fanned himself a few times on their way out and pulled Tenna aside while they walked back to the van. “That was the fucking hottest thing I've ever seen. I am gonna die.”

 

“I worry about you, dude. And about how well Nny plays this undead murder thing.”

 

Jimmy brushed her off. “Undead murder thing can have me any time he wants.”

 

“Buddy, we've been over this.”

 

“Just let me pretend, okay?”

 

Tenna shook her head. “Okay.”

 

When she wasn't worrying about Jimmy or what was going on with Devi, Tenna discovered people who would pay to scan them and take various 'readings', despite Dib's website providing some sort of jumble of nonsense data derived from several uses of Edgar's alien necklace. Jimmy said the desire for independent readings was good science. Johnny and Devi doubted that what these people were doing was science at all. Science or not, it meant they had to sleep in the van far less often, even if people did give Tenna strange looks for booking so much space for one person.

 

Most nights, they kept to one big room to save money and just because they'd be spending the time together anyway until they fell asleep. They wrote songs and made fun of local cable channels and ordered hilariously excessively room service and all of it was the most fun as a group. Occasionally, however, Edgar or Tenna would put in a request to split up the rooms again, and they'd end up in two, tossing Jimmy back and forth between them depending on who had made the room request. Jimmy didn't complain, but there were clear unspoken worries about how he was doing.

 

In between posting about where they were going next or giving shout outs to weird fans he met at the previous show, Jimmy took to using the blog to shop for services he wanted and posted that he was looking for a tattoo artist who could see him. He received an email a week later from someone who would put ink on him in exchange for seeing the group perform again. The next show they did was in the artist's city so Jimmy could get the Homicides' stars on the inside of his left elbow. He then apparently conducted a lot of tattoo business over email. Occasionally, he'd take off his shirt in the van or a motel room, casually revealing a new spot of ink, and someone would stare at him. 'Where did that one come from?' Jimmy usually just shrugged.

 

The blog refused to limit itself to the mundane, however. One morning, Jimmy awoke to thirty-four duplicates of the same message: “You should get in contact.” It spooked Jimmy, who thought they should mention it to Dib. Johnny thought otherwise, however, deleting thirty-three of them and putting up a reply to tell the sender to shut up.

 

After that, the same message came once a day at noon. After two weeks of it, Edgar contacted Dib from a motel lobby, regardless of anyone else's feelings on the matter.

 

“So can we figure out who this is?”

 

“Mmm, maybe, let me take a look at something...”

 

“It's not threatening or anything, it's just weird. It might be Pepito or Todd, even.”

 

“If that's the case, I probably won't be able to track it,” Dib said, his keyboard clattering away in the background. “I don't think Hell has an IP address.”

 

“We really think Pepito's house is Hell?”

 

Dib sighed. “The Hell-Seekers do, and frankly, I wish I could dismiss what they're seeing because as soon you give them even a _shred_ of legitimacy their hoaxes get harder and harder to disprove... But this looks like a solid theory. It's hinging on some pretty traditional views of Hell, granted, so what we could more likely be looking at is the kind of anomaly that originally _inspired_ Hell, but given your friend Pepito... Well, the evidence is worth considering.”

 

“He was right across the street. I practically went to school in Hell.”

 

“Pfft, you and everyone else.” Dib scoffed. “I can't find a source for your messages. It looks like they've just been spontaneously generated. They're not being sent by anyone at all. Could be a glitch in the site after the first one was sent and it's just hiccuping the same message every day. I might say it was harmless.”

 

“You _might_ say that?”

 

 _“If_ I didn't know any better. You people have been in that Hell house, Johnny has that possessed key, you're mostly invisible, you say your own house is strange, you've had far more success doing what you're doing than my blog should have given you... Something is going on around you. There is something else at work here.”

 

Edgar's shoulders drooped. “That's... _great.”_

 

“Listen, next time something weird happens to you people, turn on that camera for me.”

 

Edgar touched the pendant on his neck almost without thinking. “You mean it's not on all the time? Here I thought you just liked watching me.”

 

“I don't have time to waste alien technology on video of you and Johnny crawling all over each other, come on.”

 

“That is _not_ – never mind. I'll turn it on if something happens, but this blog thing is the weirdest thing that's happened to us since we left and I don't think you want me to record looking at a screen.”

 

“Speaking of that, will you be coming back?”

 

“At some point, I guess. Why?”

 

“I could get a much nicer interview with you all if you were here in person instead of on a library webcam.”

 

“Uh-huh. We'll let you know.”

 

“Good luck with your possessed blog. I'll keep a monitor on it for you.”

 

“Thank you?”

 

“Agent Mothman out.”

 

Edgar looked down at the phone in his hand as the display went blank. “He always seems like he could be kinda normal and then he says that.”

 

Edgar returned to the room with the others and tossed Johnny's phone onto his pile of discarded costume pieces.

 

“Was Dib helpful?” Johnny asked.

 

“Sort of. He's pretty sure Pepito's house is actually Hell and he wants me to record weird things that happen to us.”

 

Jimmy tilted his head. “That is... not about the blog.”

 

Edgar sat on the edge of the bed with Johnny. “Right, sorry. Sometimes he talks so much I forget why I called him. He said the messages are coming from no one. So it's literally either a website glitch or aliens.”

 

Tenna put her hand on her heart. “I really feel like I can really identify with those options.”

 

Johnny mimicked her gesture. “Right? Like that's in me at a core level now. We should put it on a shirt.”

 

Tenna nodded serenely.

 

“So we can't stop them?” Jimmy asked.

 

Edgar shrugged. “He said he'd keep an eye on it. That's the best we've got.”

 

Devi sighed and reclined back in her chair. “Wow, it's amazing how not comforted I am.”

 

Tenna patted her shoulder. “Hey, if the weirdest thing that happens to us is a website glitch or the world's laziest aliens, what's there to be worried about?”

 

 

 

 

Dib ran experiments on the group from afar, telling his followers who were also fans to try various kinds of film, to switch off who was _doing_ the filming, and to have someone who could not see the group attempt to film them.

 

The band usually heard about it after the fact via emails to Jimmy. He'd open emails from 'Agent Mothman' and find video of an empty stage that suddenly revealed a whole band on it after someone's head crossed in front of the frame or the camera slid from where it was meant to be pointed. The emails asked for clarification or testimony regarding what happened at this exact moment, given what obvious tricks could have been used, but the group was usually unable to identify where the shows in the footage were even taking place, let alone what was happening at the exact second featured on a cell phone video.

 

Most often, Johnny shrugged and returned to his notebook or his headphones when the emails came in, but Jimmy took them very seriously, watching each clip several times to try to help as much as he could. Devi told him he was going to start accidentally fabricating memories if he thought about the shows too hard. He stared at Johnny when she said it and spent a lot of time trying to steal long looks at him after that single comment.

 

Inspired by Dib's weird research, Tenna decided to take some video herself and try mingling in the audience once. She took Johnny's phone out among the crowd and recorded the confusion and excitement of the cocktail of people who hadn't seen the band before being told what was in store for them.

 

“This is my third time,” one girl explained. “I brought my friend tonight, she's never been! She's gonna flip!”

 

The friend leaned forward to get a better angle to talk to Tenna. “Have _you_ seen them?”

 

“I'm _with_ them,” Tenna answered.

 

“I don't know what's going on,” said one guy with a pierced eyebrow holding a red plastic cup. “They just told me it was gonna look like nothing for a while and then there'd be some kinda zombie thing? Not really into magic shows and shit, so I hope this is cool.”

 

“It's not magic,” Tenna promised. “It is also cool.”

 

There were kids wearing stars on their faces and kids dressed all in black who smelled like smoky spices. People holding hands and people clearly just there to be drunk and people trying to look stoic and cool but who felt lonely as hell to look at. Older guys hung in the back while younger girls avoided them in clusters. The group Tenna spoke to was delightfully diverse in their tastes, with a crush on every band member reported by at least one girl. Tenna hadn't considered how smug Edgar must feel about having Johnny until one of these girls expressed a strong admiration of Devi. Tenna had to restrain herself from saying, “Yeah, she and I are _in talks_.”

 

The reality was slightly less impressive than that sentence would have made it sound, but Tenna chose to invest herself in it anyway. It would work out. If Edgar could do it with _Johnny_ , Tenna could manage with Devi.

 

“I'm gonna see if Jimmy will sign my shirt,” sighed a girl with short bleached hair.

 

“You're gonna have no problem with that,” Tenna told her.

 

As she backed away from the girls to explore the rest of the crowd, she walked into a thin woman with glasses and a large ankh pendant on her neck.

 

“Sorry,” glasses-woman said. “Wasn't watching where I was going.”

 

“All good!” Tenna chirped.

 

“Looks like they're almost ready.”

 

“Oh, have you seen – ?”

 

But Tenna's voice was overpowered by the sudden explosion of sound from the stage.

 

Every noise went right through her. Johnny's voice seeped into the air all around her, amplified and carried by electronic distortion from Jimmy and Edgar, and every snap from Devi's drums pierced Tenna's chest and restarted her heart.

 

Johnny waved at everyone, still not over his habit of laughing in delight when he saw that there were people there to watch them at all. “If it's all the same to you guys,” he said as the noise around him warped into the intro of a song, “we're just gonna get started.”

 

“ _We paint the screams and watch the time_

_sitting in our world outside_

_the colors come ringing from the wall_

_here our unseen free for all”_

 

 

It had been a long time since Tenna watched them from the front and not from just offstage or behind a curtain. Being up on a platform really helped sell the image - Johnny's in particular. Even Tenna, who helped put the image together everyday and was more than used to it by now, found him rather captivating from this angle. They all were, really. Dead or not, her own work on their faces or not, everyone was beautiful. She'd have to tell them later.

 

“ _blood on the floor and we're coming home_

_sky underground and we're coming home_

_fortunes devoured, a bridge to the stars_

_hour by hour, we see what we are”_

 

All around her, reactions to the Homicides emerged like popcorn – a sudden gasp in the midst of confused staring and waiting; cheering from people who brought an uninitiated friend; sustained shrieking from the clusters of younger people for their favorite member of the band. Johnny and Jimmy were the most popular choices for screaming teenage crush, but Edgar and Devi had a small share of fans too.

 

“ _dead faces exist only in mirrors_

_who would have guessed they'd be trapped by a lens_

_all that we have comes from below_

_one key on this ring leads to the end”_

 

And they all looked amazing, and they were making something together, and people could see them and loved what they were doing. Tenna focused her video on the stage and cheered for her friends like she was seeing them for the first time.

 

 

“ _blood on the floor and we're coming home_

_sky underground and we're coming home_

_fortunes devoured, a bridge to the stars_

_hour by hour, we see what we are”_

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Dib's sudden obsession with video and then Tenna's foray into recording a performance from the perspective of the audience, Edgar added borrowing Jimmy's tablet and playing with the record function to his list of small hobbies.

 

He recorded himself a few times in secret, just to watch the playback, and then deleted the videos before he finished with the tablet. There were no reflections in video, so this was the only way he could see himself alone. Seeing himself move and talk and exist without the other faces captivated him in a way he couldn't describe, and the longer he watched himself the less he was convinced it was his real self at all. It felt so much like when Johnny had first told him his name and he spent ages in front of the mirror trying to make 'Edgar' fit with the features he'd been just calling 'me'. Except now he wasn't even sure 'me' was the right word.

 

What Edgar recorded most often, however, was Johnny. This wouldn't have been a surprise to anyone, of course, though Edgar fought with feeling ridiculous and delighted every time he did it. Lately, they spent so much time getting photos as the Homicides that Edgar particularly loved video of just regular Johnny: talking while eating from a giant pile of Jimmy's french fries, passionately explaining some strange obscure topic to Edgar when they were alone, complaining about visible people and the systems that still kept them out of things they wanted, telling long-winded stories, softly discussing something he'd remembered, sitting quietly focused on his sketchbook. He never let Edgar get away with it, however. Every single recording started or ended with Johnny calling him out that he was recording again and he'd either continue with what he was doing, rolling his eyes, or the video would cut to black in the middle of Edgar laughing.

 

If they'd been videos of anything else, Jimmy probably would have deleted them when he got the tablet back, but any time Edgar got a moment with it, the videos were just where he left them. He didn't know what he'd ever need them for, or why he felt so compelled to capture every second of Johnny possible, but it made him happy, and Johnny had taught him he should do absolutely anything that made him happy.

 

 

 

Things were going so well it was almost funny. Like Dib had said, they'd gained far more success from just posting a video and half an audio clip to his website than they really should have deserved. Edgar loved what they made and what they were doing and was used to success montages from television, but even he knew it should have taken more time for people to respond to them like this.

 

Johnny suggested it was just visible people's enjoyment of mindless novelty. They liked the band because they popped up out of nowhere and were weird on the internet and that was all. He suspected only a handful of the people who watched them regularly actually liked what they did. Edgar disagreed with him, but it didn't matter much. They all played like it was life or death when they were on stage, so whether people were there to see them sing their way to existing or because they liked what was being sung, the result and the effort were the same. This was particularly true of Johnny, who started to show signs of working too hard long before anyone else.

 

The first time, it was really almost nothing. As they left a stage and an enthusiastic audience, Edgar slid up next to Johnny in the hallway to take them backstage.

 

“Hey, you were fantastic.”

 

Johnny blinked into the distance for a few seconds, and looked back at Edgar as though someone else had only mentioned Edgar was there. “Oh. Thanks.” He was out of breath rather suddenly, but that was to be expected as the rush from the show wore off.

 

Edgar laughed. “Still a little dazed?”

 

“Yeah, yeah. I'm fine.” Johnny smiled at him, fondly even, but it was tired.

 

They walked on together with Edgar swept up into the enthusiasm of the others almost immediately. No matter how many times they pulled off a show that felt real, it never stopped being exciting. With everyone enthusiastic and congratulating each other, they felt like a strange kind of family. There were no groups defined as families like this on TV, but that was starting to matter less and less lately.

 

When Edgar looked back to Johnny after the flurry of hugs and yelling from the others, he was smiling, breathing normally, laughing, even allowing small touches.

 

They were fine.

 

And for most shows, they absolutely were. Johnny sang and enchanted people effortlessly and beautifully and the others got better right along with him.

 

Though Johnny commanded everything he so much as glanced at while he was on stage, he was a little distant anywhere else. It didn't ruin relationships and it hardly brought any attention to itself at all for people who weren't Edgar, but it was there. Johnny spent just a little more time staring into space next to heaters in motel rooms, sat just a little longer in rooms with running fans, and lingered with his headphones on later into the night before (usually) climbing into bed with Edgar.

 

The first time Edgar noticed it becoming a pattern, he sat up in bed and finally questioned it. “Nny, what are you doing?”

 

“Shh!”

 

Edgar held his breath and listened, but he heard nothing at first but his own song and his own heart, both there, always running, faint, undistracting.

 

When he let the atmosphere of the room really sink in though, he heard the heater running.

 

“Is it the static song?”

 

“Shh!”

 

He watched Johnny sitting in front of the heater as long as he could, but eventually fell back into sleep, only realizing he had done so when Johnny tugging on the blankets next to him woke him again.

 

“You okay?” Edgar asked groggily.

 

“Fine.”

 

“What time is it?”

 

“It's fine. Go back to sleep.”

 

He should have been worried, and maybe he was at first, but he'd done it so often and the conversation had been the same words for so long that Edgar almost didn't say anything anymore when he woke in the middle night and found Johnny sitting on the floor next to the heater or at the threshold of the bathroom rather than in bed.

 

Inevitably, when asked about what he was doing, Johnny immediately became frustrated.

 

“Stop, I can't hear it when you're talking.”

 

And then Edgar would try to help. “Are you _sure_ this isn't yours?”

 

“Yes! Quiet!”

 

And then, just as inevitably after a while, Edgar would give up on sleep to sit with him on the floor next to the heater or the broken TV or the bathroom door while the fan was running, and he'd listen. Eventually, he learned not to start a conversation at all, and just climbed out of bed to sit with Johnny until Johnny spoke first.

 

“It's calling me,” Johnny would say, as though he hadn't said it every night.

 

“What is it saying?” Edgar would keep his voice low, soft, just under the sound of the heater, television, or bathroom fan.

 

“I don't know, it's just _calling_ _me._ ”

 

On most nights, that was where it ended. Johnny would fall silent and Edgar would eventually give up and return to bed, where he'd thankfully still find Johnny in the morning. But the last night, Johnny looked at Edgar and added, “It's looking for me. And it's looking for home.”

 

Edgar was so surprised to unlock a new facet of the conversation he almost didn't keep himself quiet. “Does it want _you_ to take it home?”

 

“I think I _am_ its home. And if I don't come to it, it's coming to me.”

 

“What is it? Just a song?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“Is it the voice from the static?”

 

“I think so?”

 

“You know, Jimmy looked up this sort of thing, and – ”

 

“He doesn't know what he's talking about.”

 

“Nny, just listen. There's a thing _like_ this that can presumably happen to normal people. This might not be something we have to worry about.”

 

“We know the son of Satan,” Johnny said. “I have the key to Hell on my neck. You and I remember each other spanning back two other whole lives and most of what we remember is murder. You think this is accidental?”

 

“Okay, well, what does it sound like?”

 

Johnny sighed in frustration. “It's … it's a voice and a song. But there's also no voice and I think it's some girl at the same time.”

 

“Wow. Okay.” He didn't know what else to say, but luckily Johnny didn't seem to need him to say anything at all.

 

Johnny closed his eyes and softly sang a string of notes. They were shaky, like he was following along behind someone rather than charging ahead confidently on his own. Johnny had sung the same little string of notes in the grocery store on their first day out, but as much as he tried, Edgar didn't recognize the song.

 

“Is that what it's saying to you? Still?”

 

“It's the clearest thing I can hear. The rest is just feelings, cloudy sounds, and it's just _there._ Nothing is saying, 'Nny, come get me or I'll get you', I can just _feel_ it calling. Like my bones are magnetized to it.”

 

“I wish I could hear it.”

 

Johnny looked at him. “I don't think you do.”

 

 

 

 

Johnny started their next show not with a grand greeting shouted to the audience, but with the shaky notes he'd heard from the static hidden in the motel bathroom fan. He played it off like testing the mic, and no one but Edgar seemed to know it was anything but. There was a pause after the notes and Johnny closed his eyes, listening to the excited people who could already see him. When he opened his eyes again, the tiny notes were gone and replaced with the theatrical opening people had begun to expect from Johnny.

 

No matter how long they did this, it was still incredible that people even _had_ expectations of them.

 

“Fuck, wow, look at you people. You, you, guy back there, yeah. Is that a fucking goat?”

 

An audience member hoisted a small goat into the air and it bleated in protest. Several people cheered, even those who couldn't see what was going on on stage.

 

“I'm going to go ahead and assume this is about all the people saying that we're probably Satan.”

 

“Wait, no one told me we could be Satan,” Jimmy said.

 

Devi chimed in. “I could be Satan and I'm just stuck playing drums?”

 

“Hey, dream big,” Johnny replied. “Who am I to stop you?”

 

“Can we still be Satan if we're dead?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny nodded. “It's my understanding that it is preferred.” He looked back toward the audience and pointed toward the back. “Look Goat-Guy, here's the deal. You sacrifice that shit at your own risk. I know the guy you could summon doing that and he and I are not friends. So when he gets here and he's irritating and spooky, he is your fucking problem, you got me?”

 

The people around them laughed, the goat bleated, and Johnny gave a bow paired with a knowing smile. He stood up to full height with a healthy amount of flair and nodded to the others.

 

The music flowed in gently and quietly around him and he took a few long deep breaths before beginning the song.

 

 _“Something's tearing me down and down_  
_And I can't help but feel it's coming from you_  
_She's a gunshot bride with a trigger cries_  
_I just wonder what we've gotten ourselves into_

_In a trail of fire I know we will be free again_  
_In the end we will be one_  
_In a trail of fire I'll burn before you bury me_  
_Set your sights for the sun!”_

 

They'd borrowed this song because Johnny enjoyed it so much, but tonight he seemed restrained, like his heart was not quite in it. The audience reaction was smaller too, like they could sense it as much as Edgar could that the performance did not match the goat banter. He tried to make up for it, and felt Jimmy and Devi do the same.

 

 _“Mind is willing, soul remains_  
_This woman cannot be saved_  
_From the drawn into the fire_

 _Mind is willing, soul remains_  
_This woman cannot be saved_  
_From the drawn into the fire_

 _Anything to bring it on home,_  
_bring it on home_  
_bring it on home,_  
_bring it on home”_

 

And then it didn't matter. Johnny came to life like he'd been trying to trick everyone, including his own band. He burst with enthusiasm and aggressive joy in the song, triggering screaming from the audience and an even larger performance from Edgar and the others. The sounds flowed through Edgar like they were coming from his veins and Johnny sang like he was pulling the words from his heart.

 

 _“Much too weak to jump yourself_  
_Heal the wounds or crack the shell_  
_Lift yourself from once below_

 _Much too weak to jump yourself_  
_Heal the wounds or crack the shell_  
_Lift yourself from once below_

 _Praise the anger_  
_bring it on home,_  
_bring it on home_  
_bring it on home,_  
_bring it on home”_

 

Toward the end of the song, Johnny tilted his head back and Edgar swore he was just not there. He was distant, like part of him was at the back of the room and no longer on stage at all. It wasn't long enough to disrupt the song or the performance, but it was there surrounded by the same bleeding glitter flash that drove the rest of the show.

 _“In a trail of fire I know we will be free again_  
_In the end we will be one_  
_In a trail of fire I'll burn before you bury me_  
_Set your sights for the sun_  
_Bring it on home"_

The song ended after a long instrumental filled with Johnny play flirting with his friends and the people crowding the front of the stage. He turned and grinned at the others when he finished, proud of his recovery or stunt or whatever it was. It wasn't worth it to be upset with him – even Devi, when pressed to be honest, knew that people were coming to see him more than anything else. So if Johnny was happy and the people watching him were happy, there was nothing to be angry about.

 

Johnny stuck his tongue out at a girl who was waving a phone at him, and she squealed with delight at the resulting photo. Under her shrieking and the audience cheering, Johnny hummed the notes that had been calling him in the static. Another girl in the back screamed, and Johnny laughed at her.

 

“Oh, do you know that one?” he asked her.

 

There was an almost inaudible shout of, “I love you!” from the direction of the scream.

 

“How unfortunate for you,” he said. He turned back to the others. “Do me a favor? Blue.”

 

“You are gonna fuck up your throat and I am going to laugh at you,” Devi said.

 

He grinned, but didn't withdraw his request, so Jimmy and Edgar floated their way through the opening of the song they'd planned for later. Johnny toyed with someone else in the audience as he started in with the deceptively sweet verse.

 

 _“Plastic blue invitations in my room._  
_I've been waiting here for you._  
_Reservations made for two._  
_Sunlight fading.”_

 

After which, the song called for him to sing like he had gravel in his throat. He still pulled it off.

 

 _“Black tongues speak faster than the car can crash._  
_You supply the rumors and I'll provide the wrath._  
_Romance is breaking every heart in two._  
_Casting shadows in the pale shade of blue.”_

 

Even in the context of a song, hearing Johnny say the word 'romance' without making fun of it was strange.

 

 _“Plastic blue conversations in my room._  
_Saving every tear for you._  
_Trusting every word untrue._  
_Twilight fading.”_

 

The people in front delighted in having him so close as he sat on the edge of the stage, nearly kicking some of them in the face. These were strangers, visible people he'd never know the way he knew Edgar and the others, and yet he was playing the part of a murdering entertainer so well that he was allowing them to touch his hand when he gestured to them.

 

 _“Fate changes faster than the death of light._  
_You provide the envy and I'll provide the spite._  
_Reflections cutting every face in two._  
_Casting shadows in the pale shade of blue.”_

 

Even growling at them, they loved him and cheered for more of it. He stood, nearly dragging them back over the edge of the stage stuck to him like tangled streamers.

 

The more they played, the better Johnny got. He sang louder, was more believable, even glittered more as the show progressed.

 

He ended the show with one of their own songs:

 

“ _descend to find your greatest desire_

_only to see it lies far beyond_

_static speaks an empty song_

_unremembered or simply gone”_

 

“ _blood on the floor and we're coming home_

_sky underground and we're coming home_

_fortunes devoured, a bridge to the stars_

_hour by hour, we see what we are”_

 

Then he gave his teeming masses a bow and exited off the side of the stage with very little extra fanfare. Edgar, Jimmy, and Devi basked in the excited fans for a few minutes, playing little bits of songs at people and waving at people who knew their names. There were people calling for all of them. People who weren't just calling for Johnny. There were people out there excited to see just Edgar.

 

He'd only known four people capable of that until now.

 

Tenna came out to wave to people and hug Devi, which Edgar took as a cue to slip away to find Johnny.

 

It took a few minutes, and he heard the others leave the stage in the time it took, but he eventually found Johnny in a tight corridor near the venue's boiler room, resting with his back against its dark wooden walls.

 

“Hey, there you are.  God, you were gorgeous.”

 

Johnny looked up, stared at him far longer than even that compliment required – surely he was used to them by now? – and swallowed. His lips parted and instantly he was out of breath, nearly panting his next words. “Thanks, thanks.”

 

“Whoa, are you okay?”

 

Johnny blinked rapidly. “Yeah, just – it just took a lot out of me. I might need to sit down for a bit, but I'm fine.”

 

“Here, let me just...” He slid an arm around Johnny who rolled his head to rest on Edgar's shoulder.

 

“Okay.”

 

Edgar led him a little awkwardly into the back room where the others were already comfortably chatting.

 

“And she asked me to sign it! And then I said, 'What does this have to do with –'” Jimmy's excited story to Tenna stopped short when he saw Johnny walk in supported by Edgar. “Hey, what's going on? Is he okay?”

 

“I'm fine,” Johnny said, waving his hand. “Just a little light-headed. It happens if you aren't breathing right and shit, it's okay. Just over did it.”

 

There was no hesitation, no conspiratorial side-glance to Edgar, no indication that this was anything other than real and actual truth.

 

So Edgar had nothing but Johnny's totally plausible explanation to prepare him for anything to come.

 

The more they performed, the longer it seemed to take Johnny to recover and the more he ended up either hyper sleeping or depriving himself of it entirely. There were stretches of several days in which Johnny did so much sleeping that Edgar wasn't totally sure he'd seen _his_ Johnny, just the one who sang on stage.

 

Hoping some time alone would help on all fronts, Edgar begged the others' forgiveness for one night, got a separate room for himself and Johnny, and presented it as a surprise.

 

“Here we are!”

 

Johnny blinked at the room. “Just us?”

 

“I thought you could use the space. Is it okay?”

 

Johnny nodded, visibly drained. “Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Thanks.”

 

They settled into the room quietly, even pleasantly. Edgar hadn't done anything quietly or pleasantly for some time and found the change welcome. Not that he minded the company of the others, or that he'd been aching for a rest, he just hadn't noticed he'd lacked quiet and pleasant until he had it again.

 

Johnny collapsed into one of the room's beds face first, apparently just as grateful for quiet and pleasant. He sprawled out on his stomach, buried his face in the crunchy pillows, and stayed that way for a few minutes.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Johnny turned his head so one eye was visible. “Do you ever get suspicious of the shit that happens when you're asleep?”

 

“I might _now_. What do you mean?”

 

“You ever suspect that the world doesn't exist? It's just a simulation created every time you open your eyes?”

 

“No, I'm still getting over the world not being a TV show.”

 

“How long do you think you'd need to be asleep before the world stopped existing?”

 

“In this scenario, I think you'd have to be dead.”

 

“I see.”

 

“Where did that come from?”

 

Johnny shook his head, the pillow rustling against the movement. “Some head that isn't mine. It feels so familiar. It'd be almost comforting if it wasn't unsettling.”

 

Comforting and unsettling had been Edgar's exact feeling every time he looked in a mirror since this life had started. Comforting and unsettling had been the previous Edgar's entire daily life. Comforting and unsettling had been first Edgar's final conversation. “This is both of them, isn't it?”

 

Johnny nodded against the pillows, likely leaving a smear of eyeliner and glitter against the crisp white. “Yeah. They both had this problem. I don't know if I'm inheriting it or if I came up with it on my own or if there's even a difference anymore.”

 

Inheriting. Genetics.

 

“Do you... do you think we're clones?”

 

Johnny picked his head up. “What? What bullshit did you read before we got here?”

 

“No, no, I know this sounds like Dib shit, but… where did you and I come from, and what determined anything about us unless we're just direct copies?”

 

“I don't know, supernatural bullshit?”

 

“If this was proper reincarnation, we should be _anyone, anywhere._ Or dogs or something.”

 

“Count me among the people happy that you're not a fucking dog.”

 

“This relationship would be considerably more awkward, yeah.”

 

Johnny laughed into the pillows and threw one at Edgar's head, but it missed, and Edgar caught it instead. “Fuck you, I cannot believe you just said that.”

 

“I'm never going to keep your attention unless I do something weird every once in a while.”

 

“I think that's how the last guy operated too.”

 

“The last guy who looked like the same half-white guy with glasses as me and the guy before him.”

 

“Yeah. Fuck.” Johnny turned on his side and pushed his remaining pillow under his head so Edgar could see his whole face. “Where did you get your glasses?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “I don't remember not having them. And when I needed a bigger pair, I found them in the basement.”

 

“Fuck,” Johnny said again. “Can't we be aliens instead? Nothing good ever comes from clones. They're always... superfluous or inferior or shut down by their creators when they aren't needed anymore.”

 

“Or attacking and revolting. We could be those kind.”

 

Johnny smiled at him. Tired, but lovely. “I envy your optimism, Edgar.” He pushed himself up, and slid off the bed. “I'm getting in the shower.”

 

“Okay, I'll be here.”

 

Johnny shut himself in the bathroom and Edgar turned on the TV to see what weird local channels were available here. Maybe there would be a man fervently insisting the end of the world was near like last time.

 

He found a movie instead, something about creepy children that was enough to hold his interest, and when it didn't he glanced through a book. Relaxing. It had been a while since he'd done that too. He hadn't noticed that he'd missed it.

 

There was a strange comfort in being alone like he'd been in the beginning. He'd been able to entertain himself by necessity for so long that it was the most familiar thing he could do. He adored Johnny, and didn't want him to go anywhere, but just being by himself felt warm and comforting.

 

When Edgar realized he was watching the end credits of a movie that he'd seen from nearly the beginning, a knotting unease began winding in his stomach and he set aside his books to knock on the door to the tiny bathroom.

 

“Nny? Are you okay in there?”

 

There was no response, just the sound of the water.

 

Edgar winced as he slowly cracked the door open, hoping the door would make enough noise that his voice wouldn't be startling. “Nny? Are you okay? I just watched a whole movie without you.”

 

“Can you come in here?”

 

He was certain he had misheard. “...what?”

 

“Will you come in?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Edgar tried to make another obvious sound with the door just so Johnny could track his location. The room was hazy and lit with a soft orange-yellow glow. The mirrors were fogged and every drop in the air smelled like fancy shampoo and cleaning products.

 

“You okay?” Edgar asked again.

 

“Do you think all this is a good idea?” Johnny asked from behind the shower curtain. “Is it worth it?”

 

It was possible he was talking about something small, but Johnny wasn't likely to have invited Edgar into the bathroom with him over the financial or friendship implications of getting a separate motel room. Edgar took a seat on the closed toilet. It was going to be a while. “You mean the band? It's _been_ a good idea. We've all been having fun and it looks like it's helping you.”

 

“It _does_ look that way, doesn't it?”

 

“If it's not helping you anymore, it's okay to rethink this.” Not that he wanted to give it up, but he _had_ seen it doing strange things to Johnny lately. It was why they even had the privacy to have this talk.

 

“What else would we do if it wasn't? What would we do if not this? What would we be?”

 

“Just us,” Edgar said. “We can be ourselves even if a big defining trait leaves, remember?” Maybe they'd just ping pong this same wisdom between them for the rest of their lives.

 

“How many more people will see us before we don't have a house to go home to anymore?”

 

“I don't know. I've been thinking about it too.” Edgar had worried about it before, but it hadn't been first on his mind. He thought more often about staying with Johnny through everything, about how he wanted to do that with a certainty that would send Tenna and Devi into a frantic cautionary flurry, about how just in the last minute he'd thought ' _rest of their lives_ ' without a single hesitation.

 

It was probably too early to think that way. The other people who made up his memory panicked at even the notion. But of course they would; the versions of Johnny they knew had been dangerous and completely wrecked as people. Edgar's Johnny was only a little damaged. Even if Johnny didn't have the damage _now_ , he was likely to pick it up sometime in the 'rest of their lives' the others were so afraid of, so it didn't matter. Who _wasn't_ damaged in some way?

 

“Nothing I do fucking matters. Nothing changes it, nothing changes anything.”

 

“Wait, what?” Edgar got to his feet and leaned closer to the curtain. “What are you talking about?”

 

Johnny made a strangled squeak-hiss and the shock and alarm shot through Edgar right into his stomach. “Nny?”

 

Nothing.

 

“Nny, are you okay? What was that?”

 

Still nothing.

 

His head flooded with images he couldn't be sure were imaginary, with fears from two lifetimes of trying to help the same person. Terrors he hadn't realized he even had filled him in seconds.

 

“Johnny, please say something. Are you okay?”

 

“I don't think so.”

 

Edgar flung the curtain open, heart racing. Johnny was hunched over in the spray, water pounding his shoulder blades, his elbows on his knees, and his arm pouring a stream of red from his wrist as he sat on the floor of the shower, looking distant and drowsy.

 

“Oh my god, ohmygod!”

 

Johnny hardly looked at him.

 

Edgar grabbed an armful of the fresh rolled towels and reached in, pressing one tightly around Johnny's wrist and shoving another in his lap. One to reduce the bleeding, the other to reduce future privacy trauma. The water pounded on the back of Edgar's neck and soaked his shirt as he tried to pull Johnny to his feet. Johnny's pocket knife clattered across the bottom of the tub followed by several small shampoo bottles as Johnny limply allowed himself to be moved. He moaned a little, but otherwise didn't even appear present in his own body.

 

Edgar hauled him up with one arm under Johnny's knees and another around his waist, and awkwardly dragged him over the side of the tub, certainly bruising them both in the process. He wrapped Johnny in another towel as much as he could. They sat in a wet puddle in the middle of the bathroom floor while Edgar pressed the first towel into Johnny's wrist.

 

“What happened? What were you doing? Are you okay?”

 

Johnny stared at his wrist with mild curiosity, even as Edgar pulled the crisp white away from his skin and revealed pooled red stains. The wounds began to well up again and Edgar reapplied the wet towel pressing as hard as he could.

 

“I don't know,” Johnny said.

 

Edgar's head pounded and his throat was dry. 'Rest of their lives' could have ended thirty seconds ago. “I can't call the front desk, no one is going to deliver first aid supplies to someone they can't see. I'm going to have to get the stuff in the van.”

 

“I...”

 

Edgar squeezed the towel against Johnny's wrist. “I've got to get Tenna to open the van. Can you keep this on?”

 

Johnny sat up with a jolt, nearly losing his towels. “No!”

 

“No?”

 

“Don't tell them.” His breath was shaky.

 

“Don't tell – Nny, you just tried to kill yourself in a bathtub with me talking to you three feet away! What else am I supposed to do?!” _Did I cause this? Should I have noticed something? Do I not make a difference?_

 

“It wouldn't have killed me.”

 

“That doesn't make it better!”

 

Johnny reached out and gripped Edgar's wet t-shirt. “Please.”

 

Every cell in Edgar's body wanted to do as Johnny asked, no matter the request. It was always like that. It was probably not good. “Do you remember what happened the last time you told me to lie for you?”

 

“It wasn't lying, it was not telling.”

 

“And you ended up attacking Jimmy, and Devi slammed your head into a picnic table! You can't keep doing this! _I_ can't keep doing this! Please, I want to help you!”

 

Johnny winced and hunched over, curling up to put his forehead on his knees. He maintained his grip on Edgar's shirt.

 

Edgar grabbed his shoulders. “Hey, hey, what's wrong?”

 

Johnny choked on the word “Everything,” and then simply began crying. Not good, exactly, but probably normal considering the situation. At least Edgar thought it was normal. He had the memories of one man who had been friends with a murderer and flashes of episodes of Law and Order from the drama channel to measure against, so his grasp on normal for this situation could have been better.

 

Edgar took a deep breath. “Okay, okay. We'll fix it, okay? We just have to do this one step at a time. Look at me.”

 

Johnny miserably picked up his head. He sniffed and was clearly trying to fake that his breathing was more stable than it was.

 

“Can I leave you here for a few minutes while I go get something for you arm?”

 

“I don't --”

 

“Please. Meaning you won't hurt yourself while I'm gone, and you won't take this off.”

 

Johnny frowned. “I won't, but you can't --”

 

“I'll try to make something up, okay?! But you should tell them! We should tell them! I can't keep being the only person who helps you!”

 

“Why are you angry at me?!”

 

“I'm not angry, I'm freaking out!” He took another steadying breath and released his hold on Johnny to focus on squeezing his wrist. “Hold this on, okay? I mean it. Five minutes without me, that's all you need to do. Just _hold_ _this._ ”

 

Johnny did as he was asked with no comment.

 

Edgar ran his hand through his hair and tried to remember how to breathe. “Just stay here, keep the towel on, I'll be _right back_.”

 

He grabbed the keycard from the table and shut the door behind him before he could paralyze himself with indecision and ran down the hall to the other room.

 

_Did I do something wrong? Is this my fault?_

 

Tenna pulled the door open when she heard him pounding. “Yo, dude, what's going on?”

 

Jimmy piped up from the background. “Is that Edgar?”

 

Tenna squinted at him. “...Are you wet?”

 

Yes, he was wet, and he was the biggest coward in the world. “I – I had a problem with the shower, I'll tell you later. I need the keys to the van.”

 

“Sure, no prob.” She ducked into the room and came back a few seconds later, tossing the keys at Edgar's stomach. “What are you – ?”

 

He caught them and took off without thanking her. Down the hall, Devi's voice echoed, “What the fuck?”

 

_What if he takes it off, what if he's angry that I stopped him?_

 

It had never taken so long to get into the van before, but he reached inside for the bag of first aid stuff Jimmy had packed, gathered the whole thing in his arms, and raced back inside.

 

_Don't I matter?_

 

Johnny was exactly where Edgar had left him: in the middle of a large puddle in the bathroom wrapped in several towels. The shower was still running.

 

“Oh, god, okay, I'm back, I'm here. Are you okay?”

 

Johnny just blinked at him.

 

“I didn't tell them,” Edgar said, reaching over Johnny to switch off the water. “Not yet.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Can I help you up? We should probably get you dry so I can get this stuff on you.”

 

Johnny looked around as though he was just noticing where he was and then grasped at the towel that was draped over his lap. “Um, maybe?” The body exposure trauma prevention towel had been a good idea, at least.

 

“Okay, come on.”

 

He offered his arms and Johnny struggled to keep himself wrapped in the towel and get to his feet at the same time. Edgar pulled him up and tightened the towel around his torso, though is main focus was on Johnny's wrist. He steered Johnny out of the bathroom and grabbed several more towels on the way. He was going to have to ask Tenna for some of those too.

 

“Sit down, okay?” He motioned to the bed where he hoped to get a better angle to wrap Johnny's arm in whatever was in the bag. “We'll fix your arm and then you can put real clothes on.”

 

He draped a towel over Johnny's shoulders to catch the water dripping from his hair and just to offer more comfort in the form of coverage. On a normal day, Johnny couldn't be covered enough. It was strange even to see the backs of his hands now, let alone his collar bones.

 

“I thought it was okay,” Johnny said as he sank down on the edge of the bed. His legs hung bare over the side and he kept one towel firmly wrapped around his torso, and the other pressed against his forearm.

 

Edgar pulled a few large bandages and some gauze from the bag. “Thought what was?”

 

“My... my head thing?”

 

“Is this from remembering? Here, pick up the towel.”

 

Johnny pulled the stained towel from his arm. “It's... related.”

 

“Do we need to sing more or less, do you think?” He tried to keep everything neutral while he spoke, tried to just get information, even as he looked at what turned out to be multiple gashes on Johnny's wrist and part of his arm. They were bleeding less now, but still needed to be dried and covered.

 

“Both?”

 

Edgar dabbed the arm with a dry towel, and then began pressing and layering bandages and cotton and whatever else he thought would help while Johnny stared at his arm, detached, but steadier than he had been a few minutes ago.

 

“It helps part of me,” Johnny said. His voice still held traces of crying. “It helps all parts of me, maybe. Good and bad. And not doing it doesn't help some parts, but hurts another part...”

 

“I'm not sure I follow, hang on. Does this feel okay?” He tugged on the bandages he was tightening against Johnny's wrist.

 

Johnny shrugged, sniffled. “I guess.”

 

“You know who has probably read about this and could do it better?” He looked into Johnny's face. “Jimmy.”

 

“My brain malfunctions are my own business,” Johnny said.

 

“And if I could take you to a doctor, I think I'd agree with you. But it's just us. We have to take care of each other. Wouldn't it be better if they had some inkling this might be happening? So they're prepared? So they can help you if I can't?”

 

Johnny's eyes welled up with tears again and he nearly pulled his arm away from Edgar. “Yeah, I'd love having them eyeing me and suspicious and not trusting me even more than they already do, that would be fucking _great_. Let's all watch for how Johnny will go bonkers _this_ week!”

 

The key around Johnny's neck tugged back over his right shoulder toward the windows and then fell back against damp skin.

 

Edgar finished the last of securing Johnny's arm and sighed. “I think we should go home.”

 

All of Johnny's building frustration dropped right out of him, though the tears remained. “You want to stop?”

 

“No. But I think we should take a break.”

 

“What if...?” Johnny bit his lip and looked toward the window the key had pointed to. “What if it doesn't go well?”

 

_Can we do less well than this?_

 

“Then we come back out. We can always do that. I just think if doing the singing thing led to this...” He gestured to Johnny's arm. “Then maybe we ought to rest for a while.”

 

Johnny picked up his arm, looking over Edgar's patch work and flexing his fingers. He winced. “I'm gonna... get dressed.”

 

“Good. Be careful of the arm, okay?”

 

“Yeah, thanks, Mom. I got it.”

 

“Oh, god, not you too.”

 

Edgar tried to smile at him, and Johnny tried to smile back, but he mostly looked afraid.

 

Edgar changed in the main room while Johnny did the same in the bathroom. This had all been quick, really, but the intensity of it was so much that Edgar didn't feel much at all. Maybe his feelings were shorted out or maybe they were half an hour behind his body and he'd start crying in thirty minutes no matter what was happening. He should be scared, or nervous, or crying, definitely, but instead he stared out the window and watched the lights of the distant highway from the bed, his head feeling full of cotton and not much else. It kept out most of his thoughts of not being enough, of worrying if this was the first time, or worrying even more than this wouldn't be the last time.

 

The bathroom door clicked and Johnny emerged dressed in his over-sized sleepwear. His arm stayed bandaged.

 

“I'm here,” Johnny said, flopping his arms at his sides. He kept his gaze aimed at the floor.

 

Edgar nodded. “Yeah. Good. I want you to be here.”

 

Johnny sat next to him on the bed and watched the lights with him for a minute or so and then his breathing grew shaky and unstable.

 

“Are you okay?” Edgar leaned forward to try to see Johnny's face and was met with tears.

 

“No,” Johnny said. He shook a little and then threw his arms around Edgar, pressing his face into Edgar's shoulder.

 

“Whoa, whoa, hey, it's okay.” Edgar turned toward him to hug him back. “We'll figure it out.”

 

“We should go home,” Johnny sniffed into Edgar's shoulder.

 

“Okay. Then that's what we'll do.”

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

It wasn't really _okay_ , but he didn't know what else to say except, “I know.”

 

“Don't go anywhere.”

 

“I'm not. I've told you that before. This doesn't change it.”

 

“You don't understand.”

 

“Maybe not. Make me understand when you can, okay? I want to know.”

 

Johnny stayed attached to him the rest of the night, unwilling to do much but cry. Edgar held onto him, tried to keep him calm, pet his head and told him things would be okay even though he didn't know what things or how he'd make those things okay even if he knew.

 

_How many promises that things will be okay will I make before it's just obvious that I'm useless?_

 

When he finally felt safe, like Johnny really wasn't going to do anything else and like his arm would heal, Edgar finally cried too, though he wasn't completely sure what he could call the feeling that inspired it. He wasn't crying so much as crying was happening to him.

 

For a few brief seconds, in a state of panic, Edgar had seen Johnny with no clothes on, though he'd seen nothing in his frantic need to stop the bleeding and reduce freakout. Now, seeing him here crying, bandaged, missing his gloves, wearing old clothes too large for him, and definitely not in command of some musical dead people, he looked naked.

 

The lights never stopped moving on the highway.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, Edgar woke to vigorous pounding and yelling. Edgar's heart jumped and he grabbed Johnny's shoulder in a panic. Johnny whined and moaned and all Edgar's limbs went limp with relief in response.

 

_Alive. Survived night one._

 

It took a few seconds to connect the sound to Tenna, who had apparently just finished her raid on the All You Can Eat Breakfast Buffet and was now attempting to break down their door with waffles.

 

Tenna continued pounding on the door, and when Edgar finally got his bones moving and opened it, he realized she must have been knocking with her foot, as she was balancing four big plates on her arms and shoulders like a waitress.

 

“Fuck,” Tenna said when Edgar opened the door. “Took you long enough. You look like shit.”

 

Edgar didn't have the energy to frown. “Thanks, you too.”

 

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Got a plate for you and Nny. Found some special shit just for him, even, because I'm nice like that. You guys want to come eat with us?”

 

Edgar accepted the plate, which featured several maraschino cherries for Johnny tucked next to some waffles. “I'll ask him, thanks. He's not feeling great, so...”

 

“You want me to grab some of those vitamin tablet things from the gift shop?” Tenna asked. “They fizz and shit, they're awesome.”

 

“Yeah, thanks.”

 

“Okay, see you in a bit, maybe?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He turned back into the room and set the plate on the dresser. Johnny remained in bed, curled up and fragile-looking.

 

“Nny, hey. Tenna brought food.”

 

“I'm not hungry.”

 

“You haven't eaten since lunch yesterday. Please have a little. Humor me?”

 

Johnny picked his head up from the blankets and blinked up at Edgar. What had been left of his eye makeup after the shower was now smeared into his cheeks. The rest of it was probably in Edgar's shirt somewhere.

 

“What is it?” Johnny asked.

 

“Every breakfast thing ever. And she brought you cherries.”

 

Johnny's shoulder shook once with the tiny puff that served as a laugh. “I could eat those.”

 

“She invited us to eat with them. Do you feel like going?”

 

He looked at the bandaging on his arm. “Not really.”

 

“What if we covered that?”

 

“Maybe.” He pulled himself up to a mostly sitting position, bracing himself with his non-wounded hand sinking into the mattress. “Look, this is why I didn't want you to tell them, okay? Imagine if they _knew_ what this was. Imagine them being scared _of_ me and scared _for_ me, and then I have to go and _sit_ with them and feel them staring at me like some mangy stray animal.”

 

“What _was_ this?”

 

Johnny sat back and folded his arms in front of him. “I just had trouble with my head.”

 

 _Just?_ “Is there something I can do?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“Okay. Well, do you think it'll happen again?”

 

“I don't think so?”

 

“Okay.” Was it better or worse that Johnny was claiming this had come from his past living in his head and not an identifiable depression or anxiety in current Johnny? “Do you want go over there? I think she took all the forks.”

 

Johnny sighed and slid off the bed. “Okay. Let me just put something else on.”

 

 

 

 

“See, Nny's cold too!” Jimmy shouted when Johnny walked into the room in an over-sized sweatshirt.

 

“Greetings,” Tenna said. “Nice of you to join the rest of us.”

 

Edgar was about to signal her to go easy when Johnny inclined his head in gracious acknowledgment. “We like to visit the little people from time to time.”

 

“I will fuck you completely up if you call us little again,” Devi said.

 

“I was joking, calm down.”

 

Tenna changed the subject. “Edgar said you weren't feeling good. You okay?”

 

Johnny nodded. “Just from the show, I'm fine. Tired, sore throat, that kinda thing.”

 

“I got you the good shit,” she said, passing him a cup and a little paper packet. “It fizzes and has more vitamins than a person is even supposed to process in a day. You'll probably pee neon.”

 

“Great.” He set about tearing into the little tablet package.

 

“I got one too,” Tenna said. “I'm thinking of just trying to eat it.”

 

Johnny dropped his tablet into the cup. “I don't think these work like Pop Rocks.”

 

“We'll see.”

 

With Tenna trying to ingest and then immediately spitting up dissolving vitamin tablets, the morning went smoothly, normally, and not at all like one of the group had tried to kill himself the night before.

 

Devi stood up an hour later while Jimmy and Tenna argued about who had eaten the weirder food and began collecting plates. “I'm going to take these back to the buffet.”

 

Edgar jumped to go with her. “Here, let me help. We can grab some more vitamin things too.”

 

She shrugged. “Sure.”

 

Johnny stared at him with wide eyes as they left the room. Edgar smiled reassuringly.

 

_Please don't worry.  
_

He followed Devi down the hall to the elevator to the first floor buffet. “Hey, listen, while I've got you alone...”

 

“Oh, this should be good,” Devi said, shifting the plates in her arms to hit the call button.

 

Edgar frowned. “Thanks.”

 

“I figured it was something, there's no reason we both have to do this. What is it?”

 

“It's Nny.”

 

She sighed. “God. It's always Nny.”

 

“Yeah, he's... He's sicker than he looks. I think we need to take a break.”

 

“I see.”

 

“It could be good for _everyone_ ,” Edgar said defensively. “You and Tenna have some kind of thing to work out, don't you?”

 

The elevator chimed and opened in front of them. Devi stepped in, holding her foot in front of the door for Edgar to get through. “Something like that.”

 

“And Jimmy --”

 

“ _Jesus_ , Jimmy,” she said, gazing beseechingly at the ceiling.

 

“Yeah. So maybe let's just do nothing for a while. Stay home and write songs for the rest of the winter. Go back out in the spring.”

 

She looked him up and down, suspicious. “Why are you telling me this? Why like this?”

 

“I thought if I brought it up by myself I'd be outvoted. But if I told you I needed it to help Nny...”

 

“Okay, I need you to listen to me,” Devi said firmly.

 

“I _am_ listening.”

 

“I can do this, but only because I _do_ think it would do us good to rest. I don't know why you came to _me_ about this, because I'm pretty sure you remember what it was like the last time I caught you and Nny lying together.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She sighed and her shoulders drooped. The plates rattled in her arms. “Look, I know you like him, but do you think that you should be this attached to someone who wants you to lie for them all the time?”

 

“No, no, I don't, it's just – If it were about _anything_ else, I wouldn't be. I just – I feel like they're his things to tell people, even though I think he really _should_ be telling you. And I'll try to get him to! But Tenna wouldn't tell me about him opting out of gender because she said it was his thing to tell. Isn't this stuff the same?”

 

The elevator chimed again, and they stepped out into the lobby. “I don't know, Nny's gender doesn't hurt anyone and you won't tell me what this is.”

 

“I can't.”

 

“Does it affect the rest of us?”

 

“No, it won't hurt you guys. It's just mental stuff, emotional stuff. He has to sort it out before he –”

 

“I meant you too.”

 

“What?”

 

They approached the buffet and Devi dropped her plates on the cart reserved for dirty dishes. She wiped her hands on her pants and then crossed her arms over her chest. “Does it affect _you_?”

 

“It hasn't hurt me physically,” Edgar said, setting down his stack of plates. “It makes me upset, I guess, but not in an angry betrayal sort of way. Mostly in a sad and scared way. But he's not hurting me.”

 

“I'm going to remind you, for the record, that I told you he was a bad idea.”

 

Edgar took a long, deep breath. “I know. I still think you're wrong.”

 

She patted his shoulder. “Of course you do.”

 

 

 

It made sense to go home now anyway. Autumn had long since shifted into winter and while the snow that occasionally fell rarely stuck, it did had made things slick, wet, and gray. They could stay home for the worst of it while they packed warmer clothes, made some costume modifications, and considered stuffing the van with blankets.

 

The others were surprisingly enthusiastic about heading home when Edgar mentioned it, all of them with some complaint or another about the weather or their clothes or just the feeling of strange beds. Edgar hadn't even needed to talk to Devi.

 

Johnny immediately wanted to know what Edgar had been up to, of course, and talked to him alone in their room when they dispersed to get ready to leave.

 

“I didn't tell her anything, I promise. I told her you're sicker than you look and asked her if she would back me up on taking a break. That's all.”

 

Johnny rubbed his wrist and nodded. “Okay.”

 

“It's yours to tell, like you said. But I think you should start deciding _when_ to tell, and not _if._ ”

 

“I'll think about it. Let's just get going.”

 

Despite Edgar's conversation with Johnny, when everyone climbed into the van again, the atmosphere was decidedly optimistic and excited. Jimmy jumped into the seat usually reserved for his guitar with such enthusiasm that the chair tipped to one side with a metallic snap and he nearly slammed his face into the floor.

 

Tenna took a look at it after making sure Jimmy's nose was still intact. “I guess it was rusty,” she said. “How nice of Dib to leave this for us.”

 

“I told him to fix the _door,”_ Edgar said. “The seats are not his fault.”

 

“Well, the metal is super nasty looking right there. It bent some other shit too, look.”

 

Edgar looked in with her to see several other pieces of metal that hadn't been rusted, but did not stand up to the force of being wrenched in the wrong direction and had bent or snapped in half. There were jagged edges everywhere. “I don't know how to fix this stuff. Maybe we can look it up?”

 

“I dunno, we'll see.” Tenna shrugged. “We could just take out the whole chair.”

 

“Then where is my guitar going to sit?” Jimmy asked.

 

Tenna stood up and tried to bend the seat back upright. “We'll figure it out, dude. We're headed home anyway, maybe we'll pack lighter this time.”

 

The seat didn't exactly stay straight up after Tenna's efforts, but it was functional for holding the guitar and didn't look so much like a death trap that it made anyone nervous anymore, so they carried on without giving it a second thought. Jimmy updated the blog with an announcement that they'd be going into hiding for a while and settled content and smiling into his un-broken seat.

 

They were a long way from home, but for once they only stopped to find food or bathrooms, and not to look at the world's biggest ball of twine or to sample the world's worst apple pie (which Johnny whined about not getting to taste for several miles after they passed the sign). With everyone so happy, it was possible this incident with Johnny's arm wouldn't matter at all. They'd all go home happy and oblivious and Johnny would heal and he'd feel so much better after a nice break from pretending to be a murderer that it wouldn't happen again. They could re-configure the relationship that had been shaped in a van and motel rooms to fit into Edgar's house. They could navigate aspects to themselves they couldn't around the others. They could be okay.

 

“Okay, time to play a game!” Tenna announced when they pulled away from a gas station.

 

Jimmy was already elbows deep in the bag of salt and vinegar chips he'd stolen in the convenience store while Tenna got gas. “Like what?”

 

She turned the volume on the stereo up so high the notes shot through Edgar's spine. “It's called ' _Everyone Sing This Cutesy Girly Song With Tenna_!'”

 

“Oh god, why?!” Devi cried, covering her ears.

 

“You love it!” Tenna shouted before beginning a sing-a-long characterized by over the top sincerity. She sang only a few lines alone:

 

 _“Seven degrees_  
_I’m down on my knees_  
_Waiting for the man to put me under his spell”_

 

And then Jimmy joined her. When she heard his voice she let go of the steering wheel to contort one arm behind her chair to request a high-five.

 

 _“Seven o’ five_  
_He walks into sight_  
_Givin’ me the eye, he lifts my spirits high_

_His passion burns and my luck takes a turn  
I’m reborn and alive with his love to survive”_

 

 

Edgar was still not much of a singer, but that didn't mean it wasn't fun to do this, and he joined in on the chorus, earning giant dorky grins from Tenna and Jimmy.

 

 _“Is it good? Is it bad?_  
_Am I simply going mad?_  
_Is it fiction or fact?_  
_Am I really losing tact?_  
_Is he magical, logical, natural? I wonder_  
_He’s got the makings of my seventh wonder”_

 

Devi finally gave in to Jimmy poking her in the shoulder to the beat of the song and sang along resentfully through the next verse, changing the words as she went, screaming that they made no sense. Tenna swerved the van back and forth a little to the flow of the song, rocking everyone inside against windows and each other.

 

Johnny sat against the window opposite Edgar, not quite frowning, but not enthusiastic either. Edgar smiled at him while singing along to the ridiculous chorus again, hoping he could just feel normal for a while.

 

 _“Is it good? Is it bad?_  
_Am I simply going mad?_  
_Is it fiction or fact?_  
_Am I really losing tact?_  
_Is he magical, logical, natural? I wonder_  
_He’s got the makings of my seventh wonder”_

 

“Come on!” Tenna yelled to Johnny. “You were so good at this game in the garage!”

 

 _“On seven seas we sail on this dream_  
_Turning it into virtual reality_  
_Reality...”_

 

Jimmy and Devi sang the song at each other as though they were on a daytime drama, with the backs of their hands on their foreheads and making passionate declarations from the heart.

 

 _“Is it good? Is it bad?_  
_Am I simply going mad?_  
_Is it fiction or fact?_  
_Am I really losing tact?_

  
_Is he magical? Magical_  
_Logical, natural? I wonder_  
_He’s got the makings of my seventh wonder”_

Just then, the song dropped for one more modified chorus and Johnny, probably just waiting for the most dramatic point possible, joined them like it had been his idea to sing it in the first place.

 

 _“Am I weak? Am I strong?_  
_In his arms do I belong?_  
_I could climb mountain high_  
_For his love I’d learn to fly”_

Edgar may have deliberately sung at Johnny. Johnny may have acknowledged him even as he sang the song like he needed to sell an audience on it. Tenna and Jimmy dropped to backup and Edgar was unable to do anything but laugh.

 

_“Is he magical, logical, natural? I wonder  
He’s got the makings of my seventh wonder_

  
_Is he fiction or a matter of fact?_  
_Seventh wonder_  
_Is he fiction or a matter of fact?_  
_Seventh wonder”_

 

“That's what I'm fucking talking about,” Tenna laughed, taking the volume back down to normal levels after the song ended.

 

“I wonder who her first six wonders were?” Jimmy said.

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “I don't think that's what she's talking about.”

 

Jimmy opened the tablet and began searching for something. “Well, seven is supposed to be lucky right?”

 

Tenna nodded. “Probably. That's the only number people want dice to land on on TV.”

 

“This is a good game,” Jimmy said. “What else you got?”

 

“Oh, we have not even scratched the surface of the wonders of my girly song collection, my friend. Prepare yourselves, we can go deep.”

 

“Oh god, let's not,” Devi groaned.

 

Tenna laughed and began fiddling with the settings on the stereo at the same time that Devi tried to swat her away from it. It would be a while before that particular war was even officially fought, let alone won, so Edgar thought he'd get some chips from the stash on the floor for maximum enjoyment.

 

Johnny's notebook stuck out from under a pile of snacks and Edgar unbuckled his seat belt to reach down to grab it. He could use it to give Johnny a covert compliment about being painfully adorable singing girly pop tunes while Tenna argued for more of them up front.

 

Just as Edgar touched the spiral binding, Tenna yelled, “No way!”, the van swerved hard, and Edgar's heart jumped as he was launched from his seat and slammed into the floor. He considered the twisted metal under the chair in front of him before he felt it, and then heat and pain seared his left arm from wrist to elbow.

 

The van rumbled over several bumps and off the side of a road before Tenna forced it to a halt. Edgar moved his arm and immediately saw the blood, pain splitting through his arm like lightning. His first thought was that there was not as much blood as there had been in the bathtub. That the blood was _his_ and that this was a _bad thing_ came a foggy distant second.

 

“Fucking _shit_ , is everyone okay?!” Tenna yelled.

 

Devi was layered over her somewhere. “Jesus, Ten, what the fuck happened?!”

 

Edgar's next thought, rocketing quickly higher than the dawning pain, was that Johnny was screaming but it was _Jimmy_ who knelt on the floor next to Edgar.

 

Jimmy grabbed his shoulder. “Fuck, are you okay?”

 

“Um?” Edgar hardly saw him with all his attention focused toward the rear of the van.

 

Johnny was backed up against their seat, eyes wide, hands grasping and clawing and finding nothing but the vinyl seats. “No, no, _no._ ”

 

“Nny?” Devi and Tenna called to Johnny, but he didn't respond. Edgar heard them unhook their seat belts and then the rustle of plastic bags and other things that had accumulated around and between their seats.

 

Jimmy shook Edgar's shoulder again. “We're gonna fix your arm. Are you _okay_?” he repeated.

 

“I don't know,” Edgar told him. He was met with some significant discouragement in the form of punishing pain when he tried to move the arm. “ _Fuck_ , oh god, fuck.”

 

“Shit,” Tenna said, “he's really bleeding! Where's the first aid shit?”

 

Johnny shrieked suddenly and fled to the other side of the seat. “I can't, I can't, I can't,” he chanted. “I can't do it.”

 

“Nny?” Devi called back. “What's going on? Are you okay?”

 

Meanwhile, Jimmy had snatched the first aid bag from behind Devi's chair and dumped it out next to Edgar. “It's okay,” Jimmy said. “I read some shit, I'm pretty sure we can fix this.”

 

“If I see you with a needle, I'm going to scream,” Edgar said through clenched teeth. Everything was stinging, everything had always _been_ stinging, everything would always _be_ stinging _._

 

Devi kicked her way out of the barricade of stuff around her seat as Jimmy found a water bottle and a stolen motel towel. (Were all of these things destined to be covered in blood?) He wet the towel and wiped off Edgar's arm while Devi leaned between seats to talk to Johnny.

 

“Nny, what's wrong, what happened?”

 

“I can't do it, I can't do it.”

 

“Do what?”

 

“I can't see him bloody! I can't, I can't! I can't see him bleeding!”

 

“What? You see that all the time.”

 

“Not him! Not for real!”

 

She put her hands out. “Whoa, whoa, sit down, it's okay!”

 

“What's going on?” Edgar asked weakly.

 

“Worry about you,” Jimmy told him.

 

“He's trying to climb the fucking walls,” Tenna said. “We just need to calm him down.”

 

“You'll be okay,” Jimmy said, focused on Edgar's arm. “It didn't get very deep, it's just messy. Hold still, this is going to sting.”

 

“It already – ” He cut himself off with a hiss of pain and his vision turned briefly to colored static when Jimmy wiped the long cut with an alcohol pad. “God, fuck.”

 

“That's it, that's it. We'll just get some shit on there now and we're good.”

 

“Leave me alone!” Johnny screamed.

 

Devi backed up and Tenna went to join her, holding her arms out to shield Devi from Johnny. Even after all this time, after making songs together and stealing him cherries, and singing girly pop songs, Edgar saw Tenna's distrust of Johnny in every move she made.

 

“Nny?” Edgar called over the chair.

 

“Stop it!” Johnny screamed back.

 

“Nny, it's me, it's okay.”

 

“Stop moving for a sec,” Jimmy said. He gripped Edgar's wrist tightly and continued wrapping around the strip of gauze he'd covered Edgar's cuts with. “I have no idea if this will scar, so, uh, heads up, I guess.”

 

“No, no, no, nonono!” Johnny wailed.

 

“Nny, calm down! He's fine!” Devi yelled as Tenna held her back.

 

“Okay, it's good!” Jimmy said as he released Edgar's arm. He and Edgar both scrambled to get to the back with Johnny.

 

Edgar held out his arm, though it still stung and his head was starting to throb. “Nny, I'm okay! Look, it's fine.”

 

Johnny was as near standing as he could be in the back of the van, with his shoulder blades against the window and whole body at strange angles as though he was trying to press himself through the van wall. He stared at Edgar like everyone had when they first met – terrified and feral – and for a few seconds Edgar expected to meet another Johnny again.

 

“We're good,” Tenna told Johnny. “No one is bleeding.” She still stood next Devi, gripping her upper arms protectively.

 

Johnny slid slowly down the window and sank into the seat as the feral terror faded from his face. His sleeves pulled up as he slid, exposing the bandages on one wrist. He pulled his knees up to his chest, breathing heavily. “Just go away,” he whispered.

 

Devi and Tenna stepped back and Jimmy leaned around his chair to get a better look. He motioned to Johnny's arm. “Are you hurt?”

 

“Just go away,” Johnny repeated.

 

Edgar pulled himself to his feet.

 

“Not you,” Johnny said quickly.

 

“Okay.”

 

Tenna hesitated for a moment and exchanged a quiet word with Devi. “It's fine,” Devi said. Tenna nodded and hopped outside saying, “I'm gonna check on the van”, inviting a brief rushing swirl of freezing air into the van. The door slammed behind her. Edgar took his usual seat and watched Jimmy sink a little in his.

 

Edgar tapped the back of Jimmy's chair. “Hey, thanks.”

 

Jimmy nodded, sent one last look at Johnny, and turned around with a heavy sigh.

 

Johnny stared at Edgar over his knees, his eyes wide.

 

Edgar offered up his arm. “We match,” he said quietly.

 

Tears welled up in the corners of Johnny's eyes and Edgar regretted not only those two words but ever fucking existing. “Sorry, sorry,” he said softly. “That was supposed to be funny.”

 

“I know.” Johnny's voice was muffled behind his knees. He extended his arm, looked over the patchwork of bandages, and shook his head.

 

“Can I do something?”

 

“Just exist.”

 

“Okay. I can do that for now.”

 

Johnny smiled weakly. “Just for now?”

 

“I haven't been considering any other options lately, but you never know. Let me know if you think of something else I can do.”

 

Johnny nodded. “Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah. More disoriented than anything else. I'm okay.”

 

“Sorry, I just – the last time I saw you bleed for real was two head guys ago.”

 

“I bled for the choir room.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “It's not the same.”

 

“Oh.”

 

The driver's side door popped open and Tenna hopped back in with another rush of cold. “It looks like we just skidded across some ice. Van looks normal shitty and not malfunction shitty. I think, anyway. We're good to go if everyone's actually attached to something this time.”

 

“I'm good,” Devi said. “Don't know about the feelings triangle back there.”

 

Jimmy snarled at her. “Hey, fuck off!” He clicked his seat belt resentfully. “You don't have to make fun of us.”

 

“It was a joke, Jimmy, calm down!”

 

“It's not a joke, though! Just because your only problem is figuring out what to do about Tenna doesn't mean you get to laugh at _us!_ Edgar was fucking bleeding, we can be upset however we want!”

 

“Okay, chill out! I didn't mean anything!”

 

“Guys!” Tenna shouted. “This is way more yelling than necessary! Let's just do more girl pop!”

 

“No, I'm not going to chill out! You guys just sit up there all day thinking I'm pathetic and that Nny is going to stab someone like you're better than we are!”

 

Johnny picked his head up and watched Jimmy intently.

 

“I don't think he's going to stab anyone!” Devi defended. “There's just obviously something _wrong_ with him! It's okay to be worried!”

 

“You're not worried, you're _scared_!” Jimmy challenged.

 

“You don't trust me,” Johnny said.

 

Jimmy looked back at him, though Johnny was calmly looking beyond him at Devi and Tenna.

 

“Yeah, fine, okay? I'm scared!” Devi screamed. “You people are all running around remembering murder and falling in love with each other and Nny's apparently been trying to kill himself and getting Edgar to lie again! I care about you guys and you're all fucking _terrifying!_ I talk to Tenna because she isn't _marinating in death!”_

 

Her words pinned Edgar in place and his throat went dry. Johnny gripped his bandaged wrist.

 

Tenna popped her head over her seat. “Guys, please don't do this.”

 

 _“You_ don't trust him either,” Edgar said. He hadn't meant it to come out this way, he hadn't wanted to fight, and yet with Jimmy defending him, he couldn't sit in silence.

 

Tenna's lip quivered. “He's hearing voices,” she whispered.

 

Johnny lowered his knees and leaned forward. “Yeah, and you know what they tell me? They call for me to find them and tell me I'm _a monster_!” He thrust his bandaged arm out toward her. “Would _you_ like to do this to me instead of them?! You're saying the same shit they are!”

 

Tenna gasped and hid part of her face behind her seat.

 

Devi held up her hands. “Okay, okay. I'm sorry, all right? I'm stressed out, everything is terrifying, I was trying to joke because we're going home, and it sucked. I'm sorry.”

 

Johnny sighed and reclined back against the seat. He looked wearily at Edgar and then slowly slid sideways to rest against him. Jimmy looked back at them and his shoulders sagged.

 

“It's fine,” Jimmy said. “Let's just go home.”

 

The drive was far longer than Edgar thought it should be. This might have been because they were no longer having the fun they started out with, but it was also just further out than Edgar had thought. As much as they all tried to act normal and joke around, as much girly pop as Tenna blasted until the windows rattled, things were strained. Edgar assured Johnny he hadn't told anyone anything in their notebook, but Johnny only lamented that they'd inferred a suicide attempt from bandages that could have been totally mundane.

 

“It's because they know you, and they can tell things are wrong even if you don't tell them the whole story.”

 

“Maybe,” Johnny wrote back.

 

Edgar wrote, “I'm worried about us all getting through this together,” though he didn't expect a response.

 

“We've come out of worse,” Johnny said aloud. It was quiet, but not a whisper.

 

“Like what?”

 

“It's just like when I started remembering stuff. It's like you said about me attacking Jimmy and Devi hitting me. We're okay, we're beyond it. We have to be. We're _it,”_ he said, gazing out the window. “It's only us. We don't have a choice but to get over this and keep going.”

 

“ _Can_ we get over it, though? Can we just force it?”

 

Johnny squeezed his bandaged wrist. “Everything scars over eventually.”

 

He was quiet most of the rest of the trip, only answering questions or grunting about Tenna's song choices. He stayed attached to Edgar for the duration – pressed shoulder to shoulder or wrapping his arms around one of Edgar's elbows and watching out the window with his chin on Edgar's shoulder. The closeness (and that Johnny wasn't skittish about other people seeing it) was nice. The silence less so.

 

 

 

They arrived in front of Edgar's house at mid-afternoon the day after they'd left the motel. The others helped them unpack what they needed since Edgar and Johnny both had healing wrists and didn't want to risk carrying the keyboard.

 

“I guess it's good that we were going home anyway,” Devi joked as she closed the last door on the van. “You can't play like that, can you?”

 

Edgar rubbed his arm. “Probably shouldn't.”

 

“Maybe it'll scar and Tenna can use it as a guide later.”

 

He blinked at her and then his arm. “I have no idea how I'm supposed to respond to that.”

 

Devi shrugged. “I don't either. I should just stop fucking talking today.”

 

“You could try that.”

 

She made a face at him and made her way back to the front of the van to climb in for the short ride back to her house. “We'll see you guys later.”

 

Johnny, who'd been standing silently beside Edgar, gave Devi a bow and a smile as she got into the van. She slammed the door, the engine started up, Tenna pulled them away, and the moment the van rounded the corner, Johnny fell to the street like a rag doll, his boots scraping and the key on his neck sounding a soft clink as they hit the pavement.

 

Edgar dropped to his knees. “Holy shit, Nny?”

 

But Johnny was out cold.

 

He was harder to haul from the pavement than he'd ever been to pick up off of choir room chairs, but this could have been Edgar's wounded arm as much as physics. Luckily, even like this, Johnny was not heavy to carry so much as awkward. He wasn't a large person, but he was bony and very likely sick.

 

Johnny looked small on the couch. Maybe it was just that Edgar wasn't used to having this much space, but it felt like more than just his sense of scale. He'd been watching Johnny control everything while covered in glitter, paint, and dramatic makeup. He'd known Johnny all this time as small, sure, but incredibly vibrant and always easily taking up more space in a room than he should have been physically able to. He'd coaxed his friends into choreography with nothing but glances and flicks of his wrists. On a stage or even just a street corner he was captivating and commanded attention. Now just like when he was crying in the motel, there was no costume, no flash, no purposeful glitter, just one hundred pounds or so of a tired, scared, haunted, and bandaged kid in some old tattered clothes with a key on his neck.

 

Johnny slept more than hour before Edgar gave up on it being 'normal' and called Devi.

 

“When?” she asked.

 

“Right after you guys left, just right onto the street.”

 

“Shit, okay, you want me to come over?”

 

“No, no. He wouldn't want people, I just wanted to tell someone. I'm not – I don't want to be lying for him. I tell him all the time that he can't do this, and then I just keep letting him and I'm not going to do it anymore. Promise.”

 

She sighed. “I know what you're doing. I get it. It's his business, you're trying to respect it, blah, blah. We've all done it.”

 

“Except I feel like I haven't respected it now, but I thought, in case he needed help...”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Sorry, Edgar.”

 

“For what?”

 

“The van, I don't know. Not being normal? Something like that.”

 

“Oh, we... None of us are normal. But me too.”

 

“I'll talk to you later,” she said. “Call me when... he wakes up, I guess. Or doesn't. Whichever. Good luck.”

 

“Yeah, thanks.”

 

The house was silent again when he set down the receiver. For another two hours, Edgar waited. He tried going in to wake Johnny a few times, but got no response. Johnny wasn't going anywhere and didn't appear to be suffering but Edgar couldn't walk away from him. Every moment held the possibility that Johnny would stop breathing or have some sort of seizure. Eventually, rather than pacing and wishing there was someone else to talk to, he brought a stack of magazines into the living room and waited at the end of the couch. It wasn't like he hadn't done this the whole summer before they set out to be the Homicides, after all. This was old news, and he could deal with it. As long as he could hear breathing, it was okay.

 

 

 

“Mother _fucker_.”

 

“Oh, you're awake. Hi.” As relieved as he was to hear Johnny stirring, he tried to keep himself casual. Johnny would likely freak out enough for both of them in thirty seconds.

 

Johnny sat up abruptly and dug his fingers into the couch, his legs pulled up his heaving chest. “The fuck?”

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar said slowly. “You collapsed in the street. I didn't really want to test out whether or not we could be run over, so I brought you in here.” He looked at the clock above their television. “It's been three hours.”

 

Johnny's expression fell from savage to devastated panic. “Three _hours_? What the – you didn't try to wake me up?”

 

“I did.” Edgar reached for the glass of water he'd left on the coffee table and offered it to Johnny.

 

Johnny released his death grip on the couch and took the water, though he didn't drink it. Instead, he settled into a loose ball, wrapping his arms around his knees, the glass braced on his elbow . “I thought I fixed this, I thought I made it stop.”

 

Edgar pulled his legs onto the couch too, sitting cross-legged on the cushion opposite Johnny. “Made what stop?”

 

“This, this whole _thing_ with it just shutting me down. I thought I had it. I had a system.”

 

“What were you doing?”

 

“Just trying to keep it down. Like...” He downed the water and set the glass aside. “...vomit. Just for my head. Letting it go when it was useful.”

 

“Oh, no.”

 

“The fuck do you mean, 'oh, no'? I'm handling it!”

 

“For how long?”

 

Johnny glared at him and frowned. Then his shoulders and breath shook and Edgar would have given up the basement, music, anything, to hug him and make it stop. The glare vanished as quickly as it came. “Maybe since I remembered killing you. I thought maybe if I just didn't sleep, it wouldn't _do_ this, and I could control when stuff came after me, control when I remembered it. I didn't want to – I just thought, if I could scare you less –”

 

“You haven't been sleeping.” He'd known it was going on distantly, but now every time Johnny had been up long before him, every time he'd let Edgar fall asleep first, every time he'd suddenly been so tired he slept on Edgar, they all hit him like a wave.

 

“I sleep when I have to, I guess. Just an hour or so here and there. Sleeping feels the same as this, as it all just turning me off, and if I just sleep then I dream about it, and then I don't know what I'm making up and what I'm just seeing like a goddamn documentary and then I wake up and I remember _more_ and there's so much I'd just rather be unconscious and if I _just_ – ” He gasped a few times. “If I just stop sleeping, I solve the problem. It's all on a stage and then the rest of the time I just...”

 

“Oh my god.”

 

Johnny swallowed and looked around the room, still breathing heavily. “I thought I had it.”

 

“Nny, whatever you're doing, _please_ stop.”

 

“I don't want to remember this shit! I don't want to keep doing _this!_ ”

 

“I know, but you're going to hurt yourself. You're going to end up making it worse. What if that's _why_ you just collapsed on the road? What if I hadn't been out there? What if my arm was too messed up to carry you in here?”

 

“That's not why, it's –” Johnny rubbed one of his eyes and sighed in frustration. “Why don't you remember shit like I do? Why do you get to be just fine?”

 

“I'm not _fine,_ I think about myself dying more often than someone who actually _is_!”

 

“You don't remember like I do!” Johnny clutched at his necklace. “It is just happening constantly, like a movie, like I'm dreaming while I'm awake and the only thing that delays it or stops it or makes it fucking bearable at all is singing and – and _you._ ”

 

“I --” Where to start with which one of the several things he wanted to say? “I’m sorry, and it's okay. It's sweet that you were trying to scare me less, and I'm happy you wanted to do that, though I wish you hadn’t done it at your own expense. It’s still an amazing thing for you to try to do, thank you.”

 

“I thought you might not come back if it got worse.”

 

“I didn’t think so. Even when I was scared the most, I never thought I’d just abandon you.” He motioned to Johnny's bandaged arm. “I still won't.”

 

Johnny just looked at him, his fingers still wound around the red cord on his neck. “Okay,” he said.

 

Edgar moved to the center cushion on the couch. “Can I help?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Here.” He held his hands out just above Johnny’s knees and gestured with a few fingers to Johnny’s necklace. “Let go of that thing, you’re going to slice into yourself.”

 

Johnny slowly unhooked his fingers and placed his hands cautiously in Edgar’s. “Maybe it’ll be like those trees that grow into chain link fences, and I’ll just have the thing embedded in my flesh.”

 

_He’s joking, okay, we’re gonna be fine._

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

Johnny shrugged.

 

“Do you tell me everything you remember?”

 

“No,” Johnny answered. He didn’t even hesitate.

 

“ _Can_ you?”

 

“Why?”

 

“I want to know. Even if it’s horrible. We can lessen the weight if we both carry it, right?”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure reincarnated murder brains work that way.”

 

“Humor me. I'll do the same for you.”

 

Johnny closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, as though meditating. He gripped Edgar’s hands a little tighter, and when he opened his eyes, something looked different.

 

“You couldn’t have gotten away even if you wanted to. You met me and then no one else would listen to you. You were stuck with me.”

 

“Stuck?”

 

“We spent all that time together because you really didn’t have a choice. Your choices were no one, or me.”

 

Edgar nervously tried to put a happier spin on it. “I remember being fond of you, though. I was a little scared of you, yeah, but I – I asked for all this to happen because I wanted you to be happy. I had to like you at least a little.”

 

“So you _learned_ to like me, then. Maybe it's some kind of Stockholm shit, did you ever think about that? Do you think you’d have been fond of someone who scared you if you had had anyone else around?”

 

 _You scare me a little now and I still kind of like it._ “Maybe not at first?”

 

It made sense. When he looked for even the shadow of a memory, an echo of where something should be, he couldn't find anyone but Johnny in the memories of the life before. The old Edgar had no one else linked with him, no one else having tense and complicated conversations, no one else walking with him to convenience stores.

 

“I never got caught. Either time. Neither did you.”

 

Edgar's pulse rose, though he wished it hadn't. “Me? Did _I_ hurt people?”

 

“No. But you knew me, you knew what I did, you knew where I lived, who I was. They would have taken you too.”

 

“Okay, well, there’s that.”

 

Johnny lowered his eyebrows and stared into Edgar. “That’s better, is it? Feel better to be absolved of all the _really_ bad stuff? Glad you aren’t built on the foundations of a _monster_?”

 

Johnny’s grip tightened around Edgar's wrists and his fingernails dug into Edgar’s skin, pulling at his bandaged wound and leaving sharp searing pains among the usual burning warmth that accompanied touch from Johnny.

 

“That’s not what I meant, I just – Ow, ow, stop! You’re hurting me!”

 

Johnny gasped and tore his hands away from Edgar, clutching them close to his chest. The change in his eyes vanished and he now looked on the verge of tears. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m sorry.”

 

Edgar checked his bandages, bewildered, a little scared. “What was that all about?”

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t me. I didn’t mean to.”

 

The words sunk in Edgar’s stomach like a brick. “What do you mean it wasn’t you?”

 

Johnny shook his head and stared at him, eyes wide and teary.

 

“Nny, please. You have to talk to me. What do you mean it wasn't you?”

 

“Just if – if I remember it _enough_ , if I connect with it, I just get kinda blurry, I – it wasn’t me, I’m sorry. I was just trying to tell you things, and it just... did that.”

 

Edgar rubbed his hands and wrist where the red crescents from Johnny’s nails were fading. He couldn't say it was okay, he couldn't wave it away or excuse it until he knew more. Already in the back of his mind he began seeing replays of every single moment Devi and Tenna told him not to get this close. “Okay. Help me understand what's going on, then.”

 

“I thought I had it.”

 

“You said that already. What’s happening? Why did you say it wasn’t you?”

 

“Because it wasn’t!” Johnny’s fingers wrapped around his necklace again and his breathing became shallow and panicked. “It wasn’t me, it was just…” He looked at Edgar again, and wiped his eye with the back of his hand. “You're going to hate me.”

 

“No, I'm not. I just want to know what's happening so I can understand and help you. I can't help if I don't know what I'm helping _with._ ”

 

Johnny's struggled with evening out his breathing and he leaned back into the couch, his eyes focused on his knees. “I thought when we first started this that it might be easier to perform if I remembered what they did, felt like they did. Because I was being them, you know? So I tried to access them, to feel them while I was singing, and it helped, it made it feel _true_ _._ It was really easy and I could just borrow them whenever I needed! And I was great with them, so I just kept doing it. If they're there, I might as well take advantage of it, right? And then I remembered so much about them, about _you_ , about us.” He looked up, tried to smile. “The talks I had with you! Where I told you your own self-help wisdom! I was doing the same thing, I was using them, they were right there in my head like we were the same person! They helped you.”

 

“Oh my god, this is what I've been seeing, isn't it? With you out of breath after the shows and – holy shit.”

 

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “That's... when it's definitely me again. I mean, it's _always_ me, it is, but until they're gone, it's like we're kind of a mix and my body doesn't realize it's doing things until they're gone and it all just hits me at once. Like my lungs find out I've been singing and have to settle the debt the other guys built up.”

 

Edgar put his hands over his mouth, dragged them over his jaw down his neck, thoughts racing with the implications of this, worries, questions, interest, fear. “Nny, this can't be good. You have to stop doing this.”

 

“I'm so much better when I sing with them, though! And since they get... 'out' a little, they shut me down less in return. I thought we were doing okay, I thought I had them, I thought we were working together.”

 

“Past tense.”

 

Johnny winced. “Lately, it's been harder to get them to let go. It's harder to get me back, and, sometimes, I’m not sure if _I’m_ doing things or they are.” He picked up his left arm. “It's like it's both of us, it's like we're the same and I can't remember where I start.”

 

_Shit._

 

“Can you stop it?”

 

“Yes? I think so. I think I've just been overwhelmed. It'll be fine.”

 

“Nny, this is...” He shook his head, trying to get everything to stop crowding his thoughts at once. “Can you sing without it?”

 

“Technically.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“I'm _so_ much better with them.”

 

“...Have I ever seen you sing without them?”

 

“In the beginning, yeah, of course.”

 

“Then you're great by yourself, okay? You have to stop doing this.”

 

“I thought I had it,” he said again. His hands shook as his fingertips turned red from the cord looped around him. “I’m sorry. I told you I didn't want to do this thing with you and then I did it anyway.”

 

“Wait, wait, wait, I thought you wanted--”

 

“I did, I do! I really do! I just... I know everyone else said it was a bad idea too and I’m sorry.” Johnny twisted the necklace again and started pulling so hard around the cord that Edgar's hands hurt just looking at him.

 

Perhaps it was stupid to do so, but Edgar put his hands out again. “Come on, here. You’re going to cut your fingers off.”

 

Johnny stopped – he stopped tugging, yes, but he also stopped blinking, breathing, or moving at all. He sat frozen, staring at Edgar until, slowly, he again surrendered his hold on the necklace and put his hands gingerly in Edgar's. He watched Edgar's fingers close around his and bit his lip.

 

“Are you okay with this?” Edgar asked. He shook their hands gently.

 

“I feel like I should be asking that.”

 

Maybe it was not smart, maybe it was dangerous, but, “I'm not going anywhere. I'll need your help for me to help _you,_ so you have to tell me what you're remembering and when this is happening to you, but I'm still not leaving.”

 

“I don't know if I can do it.”

 

“Can you try?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I mean really _try._ You need to mean it.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Johnny squeezed his hand, gently this time. “I'm sorry.”

 

“It's okay, we'll figure it out.” He swallowed and looked at their hands, tried to take in the image and hold onto it. “Tell me something, though.”

 

“Okay,” Johnny said wearily. He extended his legs, removing the barrier of his knees between them.

 

“I remember being fond of you, no matter how it happened. Were you fond of me? If you're not even sure who is doing things... am I going to get hurt?”

 

Johnny smiled at him and shook his head. A relief. “No. No, they won't – they _wouldn't_ hurt you. The newer one, him especially, he'd _never._ They're both just angry and lost and really, really broken. Everything they show me is like I'm looking at it through a broken mirror, it's a mess. You're the only thing that has any kind of consistent clarity.”

 

“So before was... what?”

 

Johnny sighed. “A reflex. A reflection. An echo. _Them._ I didn't mean to.”

 

“I know _you_ didn't mean to. It's just that you're telling they'd never hurt me, and they... just did.”

 

“No, no, I mean: They'd never do it _on purpose,_ never something big. When I saw it was you – It stops when it's you, it always does. It was you back when I almost hurt Jimmy too, way before I was bringing them up on purpose. Like what you said about us, about this,” he squeezed Edgar's hands, “being the difference. It's in my head too. You make it me again by just being you …at me, or something.”

 

“Being me at you? I – Is that why you've been so close? I help your head?” _This is an awful, selfish thing to be disappointed about, and awful selfish time to consider it_.

 

Johnny bit his lip. “A little? At first! But that's not it, I – even when it's not them, I wanted to.”

 

“So it's preventative, or...?”

 

“It might be?” He tightened his grip on Edgar. “But that's not why I'm doing it! That's a nice side effect, if anything. I really _like_ you. I _trust_ you.”

 

Edgar smiled at him, though he wanted to cry. “I trust _you_ ,” Edgar said slowly. “I'm just not sure I trust _them_.”

 

“Yeah, I... sort of have the same problem, they just live in my skull.”

 

Edgar swallowed and took a steadying breath. “Look, I feel like I'm always saying this, but --”

 

“You want me to tell everyone.”

 

“Yes. Because this could affect them.”

 

Johnny looked away, but didn't say anything.

 

“Nny, listen, okay? I want them to trust you too. They're not going to if you don't tell them what's going on. Imagine if you just suddenly started tearing into Devi instead of me. Do you think with things as they are now that they'll believe you if you just said it was some other guy? They'll think you made it up on the spot.”

 

“They wouldn't believe me no matter what I say. Even _Jimmy_ is starting to think I'm full of shit.”

 

“So start telling them now, before it comes up.”

 

“They won't want to be the Homicides anymore.”

 

“I'm going to tell them if you don't.”

 

“Hey!”

 

“I have to, okay? I want to protect everyone, I want them to trust you again, and _that,_ just now? That happened to me too, it wasn't just in your head.”

 

“I just want it to stop,” Johnny said. “I want to stop just being one broken cog after the next. We never get to discuss whether we tell them something fun, we never go to them like, 'Hey, guess what awesome thing we found out about him today!', it's always 'Let's talk about the latest way Nny is turning into an untrustworthy psycho this month.'”

 

“I'm sorry. I know it's frustrating. I wish I could do something for you, I wish I could be more useful than just existing at your head. I wish I could make this stop so we could tell them something good. I really, really do, because frankly I feel kind of useless. But in the meantime? We keep saying all we have is us, and we have to start considering what that really means.”

 

Johnny tilted his head. “Did you rehearse this?”

 

Edgar's cheeks got a little warm. “...You were asleep a long time. It was going to be about your arm and that sort of thing, so it's been modified, but, still, here we are.”

 

Johnny smiled at him. “Go on.”

 

“Well, that's it, really. I just mean we have to take care of each other and trust each other. Our survival as people hinges on each other. If we never connect with anyone else, then we have to operate differently from now on.”

 

“And that means tell everyone everything?”

 

“Not everything. I'm not saying we need to eliminate privacy forever, but we have to make sure everyone is taken care of. We have to take care of _you_ , and you have to take care of _us,_ and to do that we all have to know what is happening.”

 

“I guess. We already work together, though.”

 

“No one else is going to take care of us, Nny. And the problem we've had until now is that we didn't think we needed anyone to. And maybe we don't need anyone outside, anyone visible, but we need each other, okay? If we don't all trust each other, one of us is going to get hurt worse than this.” He held up his arm, though he hoped the implication carried over that he was talking about Johnny's arm as well. “Whatever is happening to you could _kill_ _you_ , and it should be _all of us_ trying to fix it, not just me.”

 

Johnny glanced over Edgar's shoulder at his pile of issues of 'ABDUCTED! Magazine'. “You found all that in the Dib magazines, huh?”

 

“Nessie feels very strongly about this issue.”

 

Johnny sighed. “Okay. I'll tell them.”

 

“Everything.”

 

“You can be there to make sure.” He flexed the hand on his bandaged arm and frowned a little. “I don't think they can see me as much worse at this point anyway.”

 

“They don't see you as bad. They're just scared. Tenna has been scared since the first day we drove out of here and she still made songs with you, took pictures, brought you cherries from the breakfast buffet. They like you and they care about you, they just don't know what's going on.”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow.

 

“Trust me,” Edgar said. “Please.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “Okay.”

 

“We'll be okay.”    _And maybe in a week or two I'll have processed the last twenty-four hours properly._

 

“This is a fucking disaster, huh?” Johnny laughed, but it was small. “This can't be what you wanted.”

 

“I wanted _you._ The rest is just weird stuff we figure out.”

 

Johnny might have smiled or teared up, but he did it at the same time that he threw his arms around Edgar's neck. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I kinda wish we were normal.”

 

Edgar hugged him back. “Don't wish too hard. I don't think that's ever going to happen.”

 

“You okay with that?”

 

“There's nothing I'm more okay with.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus we enter the 'Bad Things Happening to Johnny' section of the show in full force. 
> 
> Songs, because that's what I'm thinking about, are: 
> 
> "Outside" - The Homicides: I wrote this one with inspiration from a piece of trivia from the Birthday Massacre about how one of their strange creepy songs was just about how one guy in the band liked to run around in his house with the lights off when his parents weren't home. They just framed it in a way that it's something strange and interesting and could be read as a weird creepy thing. So this song is the Homicides' whole life before the band and their experiences with their world, but if you don't know them, and you don't know where they came from, it's a strange creepy thing. 
> 
> "Propane Nightmares" - Pendulum  
> "Blue" - The Birthday Massacre: This was from the original SWAN, used in a totally different context and way back in SWAN 13.  
> "Seventh Wonder" - Ira Losco: This is a Eurovision song that I love despite or because of its obscene girliness, I am not sure. I have been thinking about Tenna forcing everyone to sing it with her for two years at least. And seven is lucky, right?
> 
> Things are kind of slotting back into place to follow original SWAN for a while - not that this whole thing hasn't been, I just expanded into like ten chapters what used to be two paragraphs - and I'm rather excited for it. I have some changes and additions to things coming, as well as what we're now seeing with Johnny's intentional using of his other selves to do things, and I'm really pleased about how they tie into things in the future. 
> 
> Edgar officially has too much to deal with. I'm straining him considerably more than I ever did in the original, and I don't just mean making him bleed a lot more. The psychological strain of Johnny's presumed suicide attempt along with all Johnny's other issues, plus concern about Jimmy, plus worries about his own identity, plus mild concern about the messages on the blog, and he has to play in a band as his dead self! It's because I love you and have to keep you alert, Edgar. 
> 
> With any luck, we'll see more of Devi and Tenna soon, though Johnny is sort of the container for the remainder of the *plot*, so we'll see where I can get it in. I wanted to bring everyone more to the front than they were in the original, and I think that's been accomplished in a general sense, at least, but if I can push it more, that would be grand. 
> 
> I worry for these kids, and I'm the one putting them through this bullshit.


	23. echo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Homicides try to get their heads together, with varying levels of difficulty.

 

“What was that about?”

 

“It was Edgar. Nny collapsed when we left.”

 

“Holy fuck. What's he doing?”

 

“Just waiting for him, I guess.”

 

“Shit.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Devi hovered by the phone long after she hung up, rooted to the spot by a strange feeling of a lost connection.

 

“That's some crazy shit,” Tenna said. Her skill for stating the obvious was truly unsurpassed.

 

“I don't know what to think about it, Ten. It's like I'm the only one who notices how fucked up everything is. He waited an _hour_ to call me. An _hour_.”

 

“You did just cause a screaming fit in the van.”

 

“Yeah, but come on! This is important! Stupid bullshit like that should be set aside when people could be dying on the pavement.”

 

Tenna pulled her knees to her chest and folded her arms around them. “Do you think Nny is dying?”

 

“No, but I think he's coming apart and I don't think I blame him. And Edgar just... It's like he won't see sense.”

 

“Oh, that's not how it is. You're still sitting here concerned even though Nny is a broken asshole. That doesn't make sense either. You're just not in love with him.”

 

“I think calling it that is a little extreme.”

 

Tenna laughed. “You think so? Edgar's arm was just shredded open but he was more worried about Nny the entire time. He never leaves him alone, Dev. He heard about being successfully murdered by Johnny in a past life and just kept right on going. Nny sings to him. Sleeps on him. They – they've never been apart since we've known Edgar. Not for more than a few hours. Did you know that? Think about it. Not even a whole day. ”

 

“I guess.” Devi dragged herself away from the phone and joined Tenna on the couch. “What makes you so certain? Didn't we all think that was fake?”

 

“I get him, that's all. Nny makes me so fucking nervous sometimes, and, like, _damn_ Edgar has some shitty romantic aim, but I still get him. And you know, not all of us believed what Nny said about it. Me and Edgar have kind of a similar thing going on.”

 

“You do?”

 

Tenna gave her an exaggerated awkward smile. “Um.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yeah. So.”

 

“Ten, I don't – ”

 

“It's like the same thing, right?”

 

“Have you seen them in the back when they think no one is looking? This is _not_ the same thing.”

 

“But it _could_ be. Hell, sometimes, you act like it already is and I forget it isn't. And sometimes it's like this, I guess, but it _could_ be the same.”

 

“It... _could._ ”

 

And it could be and she wasn't lying, but if Edgar and Johnny had shown her anything, it was that that way lies madness. Tenna was nice, Tenna was fun, Tenna was clever, Tenna was not remembering or getting off on the idea of murder. All good qualities in a human. Maybe Devi had spent too long listening to Nny talk about how love had been made up to sell greeting cards and had internalized it. Maybe she was not supposed to be with people and that was why she was invisible. She felt close to Tenna, she liked Tenna better than anyone else she knew, but wasn't entirely sure she wanted to be hiding in the back of the van talking in a secret book with her. She'd tried to force herself into it a little, but she'd tried to do that with Johnny a long time ago too, and it was an altogether unhappy experience for both of them.

 

And it had apparently been the same way for past versions of Devi, just with less awkward 'let us never speak of this again' and more attempted homicide.

 

Either way, she didn't want a repeat of that with Tenna.

 

Tenna waved at her a little when she saw Devi had vanished in thought. “Sooo, is it _me_ , or...?”

 

“No, I don't think so. This is gonna sound like TV or Edgar, but I think it's me.”

 

“What kinda you? Like, 'worried about us only being five people' you or 'doesn't like girls' you? Because I think one of those is workable.”

 

“I don't know! I don't think it makes a difference. My clearest and best option is you, so I don't know what I'm doing.”

 

“Don't _force_ it, I was just checking.”

 

“I know, I don't want to do that again.”

 

“Again?”

 

Devi shook her head. “Nothing.”

 

Tenna shifted onto her knees and eagerly leaned closer. “Wait, no, come on, spill. What's 'again'? You forced something with me already? Or with someone else? It has to be Nny, right? Because there's no way in fuck it was Jimmy or Edgar.”

 

Devi put her hands up. “Okay, okay, slow down. It was nothing, really, we just were trying to figure out what the fuss was all about.”

 

“Oh, this is going to be a really uncomfortable image, isn't it?”

 

“It was uncomfortable to experience, so yes, probably.” She sighed and crossed her legs, going for casual but detached. “We just wanted to know what the big deal with kissing and shit was, so we tried to figure it out. It was kind of a mess. We didn't know if it was us or just how kissing sort of shit always was or what, so we just decided never to mention it again.”

 

“Oh my _god,_ when the fuck was this?”

 

“That month or so when he was trying out 'girl' a few years ago.”

 

“So you _have_ kissed girls. Historically.”

 

“I... guess? Does it count if he changed his mind two more times? I mean it was still Nny, that was just when he started taking all my clothes.”

 

“I know that. You just chose to kiss him during the narrow window of time he was feeling 'girl', so Tenna is gonna call that hope.”

 

“I can't believe that's the information you chose to take from this story.”

 

“Hey, I gotta grab what I can. I've got that and that you live with me going for me right now.”

 

“I think you live with _me,_ not the other way around.”

 

“Even better!”

 

Devi shook her head. “Sorry, Ten. I still don't know what to do with this.”

 

“Weeee could try like you did with Nny?” She flashed Devi a giant toothy grin and batted her eyes. She was good at covering what she wanted with ridiculousness and used it to her advantage as often as possible. Frankly, that was a lot like Nny, so at least Devi's taste in people to kiss had that common thread running through it.

 

“I don't want to make things weird. Or the forcing. Did you hear me when I said I didn't want forcing?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, loud and clear, we're fine! Just, you know, if you decide you need to kiss girls again, I am currently the only one you know.”

 

“Noted.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He couldn't sit around and watch Edgar sleep.

 

Edgar needed to sleep. If Johnny was honest, he needed it too, but Edgar's sleep had so little complications. There was no worry about the nature of the universe, no concern that he'd wake up a different person, no fear of what had been or what would be or where and who he was. Edgar simply said he was going to sleep and did it like it was breathing, blinking, being.

 

Johnny had done that once in one life or another. In this one, surely, right?

 

Two birthdays ago, Edgar had stolen the keys to the park swimming pool as a gift for Johnny and from the second the metal clinked into his palm, Johnny doubted everything inside him. Over the next several months, he'd hear hints of songs that had previously meant nothing to him – a line here, a verse there – and hear not a pathetic money-grab from a greeting card company against a brainwashed public, but _Edgar_.

 

In place of a song of his own, Johnny heard tiny slips of things that challenged him, scared him. Blatant love songs still repulsed him, particularly duets, but things slipped through in less egregious tunes that made more and more sense to him since being given a tangle of stolen keys. Maybe Edgar had changed him, maybe he'd been brainwashed. He'd thought for a while that at least this was _him,_ at least this flaw was _his_ , but the longer he looked at his immediate predecessor the less he was convinced of even that tiny comfort.

 

No matter how it had happened, it _was_ and despite everything he'd told himself and everyone else just two years ago, Johnny still thought of lyrics he hadn't even known he'd internalized, still felt such affinity for 'us against the world' sentiments about a single relationship and not just a state of being. He even preferred Edgar's song to everyone else's even though he'd once spent a whole day trying to convince himself he liked Devi's better.

 

There were no songs in other people. Johnny had heard strains of Edgar's trying to get out the first day they met and he'd tried to play them for him, but in a kid who couldn't hear anyone's song, having his own fed back to him hurt. Every now and then, there'd been a note or a hint, but Edgar never heard anything of his own song before they both heard the whole. Now Johnny never stopped hearing Edgar's song somewhere in his head. He could feel Jimmy's down the block, he knew exact probabilities that Devi would lash out based on certain notes in hers, and Tenna's had been subtly betraying her distrust for weeks.

 

But there were no songs in the audience. None in the interviewers. None in the girl who helped them run and then collect their stuff when Tenna lied to some church officials to get them a fun place to play. None in Jimmy's tattoo guy. Nothing in Dib, or Todd, or Pepito.

 

And none in Johnny.

 

Maybe that just meant he was like Tenna: half like the people on the outside. Except not even in a useful or fun way. Maybe he wasn't real. Or maybe he was the only one who was.

 

Which would make Edgar make more sense. He was just some pleasant figment designed to be exactly what Johnny needed at any given point in time. The people in charge had even decided to give them matching wounds. Or else this was some kind of punishment for the prior Johnny. Any harm that Johnny caused would be dealt to Edgar? He'd read a story like that once. He'd also once believed the risk of harming another person to be a laughable deterrent against doing anything.

 

Edgar looked like he needed the sleep. It had been hard to see in the van or in motels when even the best efforts never left them feeling at home or perfectly rested or free of makeup. Now in a safe place and not covering himself in stitches and gray paint again and again every night, Edgar betrayed how tired he really was. Not that his song hadn't done that already for him.

 

Johnny stood up to stop the occasional drifting romantic lyric and Edgar frowned, half-turned over.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked, still half-asleep.

 

“Bathroom,” Johnny lied. “It's okay.”

 

“Mmmkay.”

 

Johnny had been disrupting Edgar's sleep so often now that he woke at the slightest movement, even from a sleep as deeply needed as this one. As he stepped out into the hallway, he wasn't sure whether to feel guilty or grateful.

 

The house made more noise than he remembered. The heating vents hummed all around him, and every step, every handrail, and every door squeaked and squealed when he so much as brushed them. He'd brought his headphones just in case of this very thing, even though he was tempted to listen to the house instead. Maybe after he'd looked in on things...

 

 _“The clock stopped ticking forever ago_  
_How long have I been up? I don't know_  
_I can't get a grip, but I can't let go_  
_There wasn't anything to hold onto, though”_

 

 

Edgar had been interrupting all his attempts to hear the static or figure out what it wanted by asking over and over if it was Johnny's song as though Johnny wouldn't know how to recognize when something was coming from inside him or from somewhere else.

 

Maybe he had this static noise instead of a song.

 

“ _Why can't I see,_ _  
__Why can't I see_ _  
__All the colors_ _  
__That you see?_ _  
  
__Please can I be,_ _  
__Please can I be_ _  
__Colorful and free?”_

 

Speaking of songs, he didn't remember having this one.

 

Their bathroom was smaller than any motel bathroom he'd ever been in. The mirror was smaller too, though it didn't keep him from seeing all three of his faces.

 

_“What the hell's going on?_   
_Can someone tell me please_   
_Why I'm switching faster than the channels on TV”_

Edgar was still in the next room, so Johnny kept his voice low, practically a whisper, and sang with the new tune in his headphones. The others mimicked his motions, but the song echoed back through him and reached them too, infecting old memories, inspiring strange new collaborations.

 

 _“I'm black, then I'm white_  
 _No! Something isn't right!_  
 _My enemy's invisible_  
 _I don't know how to fight_  
  
_The trembling fear_  
 _Is more than I can take_  
 _When I'm up against_  
 _The echo in the mirror”_

_“ECHO”_

 

Lingering in the song, or the mirror, or his head, or all of the above, the static crept in. It did not attack or communicate, it just _was_ , but it was not always going to be that way. The song played like it was chosen for him.

 

The others faded and flickered with the song, strained against real Johnny, current Johnny, and what memories he could call his own. Every memory from the others was now potentially dangerous, and the only way he'd had until now to keep them from invading was to invite artistically useful ones _in_.

 

_“I'm gonna burn my house down_   
_Into an ugly black_   
_I'm gonna run away now_   
_And never look back”_

 

The song repeated and repeated and repeated. Was it supposed to do this? When he mouthed the words, the other two reacted. It was subtle, and he was certain he wasn't imagining it. They seemed to like the idea. Johnny even saying these words with no intent or connection to them was enough to please the others.

 

_“I'm gonna burn my house down_   
_Into an ugly black_   
_I'm gonna run away now_   
_And never look back”_

 

Did he even have this song? Was this Pepito interfering with his headphones again?

 

Johnny tore himself from the mirror and staggered out into the hall where he shook himself free of whatever had been tangling itself around his brain. The static was gone.

 

_For the time being._

 

He moved slowly, trying to sense things as fully as possible. The handle to the extra bedroom was ice cold and the hinges nearly screamed when he pushed the door open. It was still colder in there than in the rest of the house.

 

_“I'm gonna burn my house down_   
_Into an ugly black_   
_I'm gonna run away now_   
_And never look back”_

 

“Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?” Johnny said to whoever was feeding those words to his headphones. “No thanks.”

 

He switched the music off and peered out the window where the horse painting was still visible – though faded and peeling – on the neighbors' roof. This was casual stalling, however. What he really was here for was on the other side of the room, innocently tucked among several issues of National Geographic and copies of 'thematically appropriate' books.

 

He slid the book from the shelf and opened the cover to the page containing Edgar's name and ominous description.

 

“Are you the ones trying to get me to burn the house down?” he asked the yellowed pages. “Whoever the fuck you are.”

 

The last page said there were new notebooks for Johnny in the basement. Maybe this was all some kind of lure, but he was probably already too far gone to worry about the consequences of taking things from the basement.

 

He set the book aside. It was mysterious and clearly supernatural but also had done nothing but generate a list. It was exactly weird enough that it was worth looking at occasionally, but not threatening enough for him to think it needed to be destroyed.

 

_Though I wonder if we can destroy the window that lets them update that book._

 

The stairs creaked under his feet even without his usual giant boots.

 

The downstairs felt especially empty. He avoided the living room altogether. The strangest thing in there was not magic or aliens, just a pink recliner.

 

He rounded the corner instead on his way to the basement and found the kitchen filled with an almost deafening amount of noise from the refrigerator.

 

He didn't try to find the voice in the white noise, but it found him while he was staring out the kitchen window at the stars.

 

It was there in the same way faces were in dreams. His mind was willing to see this as a voice that was calling him, but he couldn't describe it or even what it was specifically saying. It would be even harder when it vanished.

 

Now it was there and he could feel it and he knew it, but even now he knew he'd never hold it long enough to really have it, understand it. There was noise, there was a voice, there was a song, there was nothing, there was static, there was a thick wall of water between him and the sound, there was nothing but Johnny and the sound.

 

And that little slip he could hold onto, just those few notes. He knew they weren't right when he heard them and tried to sing them back, but he had nothing else to go on. He sang them softly but even that echoed so strongly in the kitchen it nearly startled him out of hearing the notes in his head.

 

Whatever it was, it still wanted home. He'd heard it in a grocery store, and a department store's wall of televisions, and in parking lots, and in countless motels, and in the van, and in the conference room of a shitty church, and now here in his own kitchen and none of those places were home to the voice, the song, the static.

 

His 'own' kitchen. His kitchen used to be the home economics lab. This was Edgar's fucking kitchen. Inside Edgar's house that contained a book that watched everything within its walls and a basement that had started generating things for Johnny before he ever set foot in it. Things Johnny liked, things that made him happy.

 

Things like Edgar. Edgar who wouldn't stop saying that making Johnny happy was what he wanted. Edgar who came to life in this house instead of on a random patch of pavement like everyone else.

 

The song and the static seeped into him. Along with the notes and the voice, Johnny considered that one day in early May almost eight years ago this house had generated its first thing for Johnny and it wasn't boots or paint or macaroni or cherry pie filling.

 

It was Edgar.

 

The longer he heard the voice the more he felt the need to run, though whether he was going to or from the voice was still up for debate. It called for him, it called _to_ him, it poked at urges and ideas that he usually dismissed as leaks from the others and pulled them forward, amplifying their truth. The last time this happened he'd been sitting on the floor of a motel shower with a notion and a knife.

 

_“I'm gonna burn my house down_   
_Into an ugly black_   
_I'm gonna run away now_   
_And never look back”_

Now it could be believed, now the voice wasn't a voice but a _feeling._ Now it wasn't just a song that had been slipped into his headphone, now he felt it like the it had been born in him. It was so easy. Just a little longer and he'd believe that this had been his idea all along. He'd defend the idea against anyone. He'd fight, he'd run, he'd never look back, he'd –

 

The refrigerator sputtered to a stop and the voice with it. Johnny took a few deep breaths and looked around the dark kitchen. According to the microwave, it was after three in the morning. All for the best that the voice didn't get much further: having voices tell you to burn your house down at three in the morning was a good way to ensure friends didn't want to play in a dead people band with you anymore.

 

“Nny?”

 

Shit.

 

A soft light came from near the front door and Edgar came around the corner. He stopped when he saw Johnny in the dark kitchen. “What are you doing?”

 

“I heard the voice. What are _you_ doing?”

 

“Looking for you. You didn't come back and I was worried.”

 

“I'm fine.”

 

“You mean except for hearing voices?”

 

“Yeah. Except for that.”

 

Edgar rubbed his eye and stepped cautiously into the kitchen. “Is it any different here?”

 

Johnny glanced around the room and wanted to accuse the refrigerator of something. “No, I don't think so.”

 

“Are you coming back to bed?”

 

“I...”

 

“You don't have to stay with me. I was just scared you were – ” He took a deep shaky breath. “Doing something.”

 

 _I got out of bed at three in the morning to listen to the refrigerator talk to me and made my boyfriend cry. How the fuck did_ _ any _ _of these things happen?_

 

“I'm fine,” Johnny said. He meant it to be a comfort, but it sounded like nothing. _Try again, for fuck's sake._ “I'll come back up with you. Sorry.” He stepped forward and showed his arms in more light. The wounds still featured prominently, but there were no new additions. “I didn't do anything, see?”

 

Edgar shook his head and started back toward the stairs. His song sagged behind him like a deflating helium balloon tied to his ankles. “I'm sorry. I'm still processing, I think.”

 

“It's not you,” Johnny said suddenly. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, and Edgar turned around half-way up to look at him.

 

“What?”

 

“It wasn't because of you. You didn't do anything.” He'd said this before, they'd done this before, and it was just coming out and happening without him. “It wasn't anything you _didn't_ do, either.”

 

Not that the words weren't _true_ , or he wasn't sure they were the right things to say, but Johnny almost had no control over whether the were said.

 

Edgar stared at him in the little light that came in from the street and for a moment Johnny worried he'd just fall apart on the staircase. Just go limp and spill down the steps like a puppet with severed strings, limbs tumbling down the stairs in pieces. Instead, he smiled, though it was a little lopsided. “Thanks.”

 

Edgar needed to sleep. Johnny had had that part right. But he had underestimated the complications Edgar had with sleeping in that he hadn't considered himself one.

 

 

 

Jimmy's trailer felt strange. It was in the same place and it hadn't been broken into while he was gone, but something about it felt off. Books and posters and music still lined the walls, the carpet, the furniture. All still where he'd left them. The second copy of the German book for Edgar was still sitting on the floor in front of his shitty couch.

 

He'd meant to give it to him before they left. He'd meant to see Edgar regularly and to practice all the word genders and say stupid things to each other about potato salad. Yet the last day before they left to go be the Homicides properly, he couldn't bring himself to present Edgar with the book or suggest they use it in the van. Did he feel too ridiculous or too hopeless to bother? He still had a few gifts for Johnny lying around the place for that same reason. Johnny and Edgar were such a thing that Devi and Tenna weren't even protesting as much as they used to. Gifts were probably not good for their original hopeful purpose anymore.

 

Devi and Tenna were supposed to have a 'talk', so Jimmy was quietly pushed back here to his strange cave of things. Everything here should have been comfortable – it was all his things just how he liked them and just how he left them – but he spent most of his time pacing and feeling unsettled. He was the only one exiled to alone time. Everyone else always had someone nearby. Edgar was never forced to be without Johnny, Tenna never an optional companion for Devi. But everyone could be rid of Jimmy as often as they wanted. There was no one Jimmy got to be with by default or because it was right or just 'how things were'.

 

Something had gone bad in his mini-refrigerator. Maybe that was why the trailer felt strange.

 

Maybe everyone was having a 'talk' right now. Devi and Tenna were deciding if Jimmy should be a permanent exile to his own room, and Edgar and Johnny were likely discussing Johnny's apparent suicide attempt. No chance they'd break up over it or anything, but maybe it would weaken something. Maybe it meant something that Johnny wasn't happy enough not to slit his wrists.

 

Jimmy threw out some bread that had turned entirely green, and pondered some cakes from the school vending machine that hadn't.

 

Had the other versions of Johnny tried to kill themselves? Had they considered that any different than killing other people? Did they even really exist?

 

It wasn't good to question that last part. He was supposed to trust Johnny without question, but no matter what he did or how hard he tried to focus on it, he never remembered anything about any old selves or any other Johnny. Edgar had told him he didn't want to, that it was all really bad, but Edgar was the one falling asleep with Johnny draped all over him, so his testimony wasn't exactly reliable. He also had a history of lying for Johnny. Not that Jimmy blamed him. Jimmy would say anything Johnny wanted him to if it meant he could be the one falling asleep with Johnny attached to him. Frankly, he'd do that for Edgar too. Edgar could sleep with Jimmy and he would not complain. They could invite Johnny. Either or both, it didn't matter.

 

He was as surprised when the Edgar thing happened as Devi and Tenna were when he told them. His obsession had been Johnny for so long that it seemed impossible Jimmy could ever deviate from it in focus or type. And then Edgar, who Jimmy had deliberately tried to reject from the group and thus Johnny's favor, was weirdly considerate even when he should have been losing his mind. Remembering murder hadn't made Edgar a bad person, or even a scared one. His weird inherent kindness had persisted even when no one would have blamed him if it hadn't.

 

The experience was odd, and at the time Jimmy dismissed Edgar as just being weird, but the longer he thought about it, the more appealing Edgar was. Even Tenna had failed Jimmy occasionally, but Edgar had tried to be good even when he was coming apart. Even when Jimmy had just broken into his house. Edgar also probably liked strange-looking boys since he thought Johnny was one for so long, so Jimmy could be his type, even if Jimmy didn't remember anything that bonded them from past lives. Hell, remembering murder hadn't made a difference for Johnny and Edgar, so it wouldn't matter with Jimmy either way. Lacking past memories or shared murder wouldn't give Jimmy less of a chance.

 

And if he _could_ remember, if there was really something there to recall, then he could spend more time with Johnny. Then Johnny would ask him questions and they'd compare notes. Or maybe with both of them. Maybe they could bond over this, maybe they'd let Jimmy stay with them.

 

This was why he didn't like spending time alone. With no one else around he had thoughts and feelings that didn't makes sense with each other and made things difficult. Stuff he'd have to try to just feel at separate times or not at all. Right now, part of him wished Edgar had never happened, and part of him relished even a distant chance at having him while also keeping an eye on Johnny. Did the others work like this?

 

_Probably not. Everyone else got exactly what they wanted and nobody else had been replaced._

 

The generator he'd been using for heat had broken since they left. Maybe it was just the cold that made the trailer feel so different.

 

Johnny always said there would be no one else. That no one else would ever truly understand them. That no one else would be to them what they are to each other. Jimmy believed him, because why wouldn't he? Everything Johnny had ever said sounded true, and real, and like it was delivered wisdom from some higher being. They were the enlightened ones living outside the rest of the world. Only they could see how disgusting and foolish the visible people were because they were as blind to their own nature as they were to Johnny and his friends.

 

But then Johnny met Edgar and had either been wrong about romantic bullshit being made up by corporations or he fell for their scheme.

 

So maybe he was also wrong about who would understand them. Maybe there was a tattoo artist somewhere who wouldn't mind the company of an invisible dude in a band for a little while.

 

 

 

 

 

During their time off, they made improvements to their image. Tenna had plans to reinforce their costumes and add new pieces. Devi suggested they paint the van while they were feeling the general vibe of renewal and Johnny was so enthusiastic about the idea it was like nothing had ever been wrong with him. Edgar suggested Johnny tell the others about what he'd been doing on stage during the art project, and though Johnny was not as thrilled with that idea as he was the artistic one, he agreed to do it. It was important to tell them, though if Edgar was honest, he just didn't want to be the only one who knew anymore.

 

Tenna brought the van to Edgar's house, where the basement had helpfully provided paint they could use to make it theirs.

 

“We're gonna do stars, right?” Jimmy said as they surveyed the blank van and the available colors.

 

“I feel like we have to,” Johnny said. “We could make it look like the blog.”

 

At that suggestion, they set to work covering the van in black to add a galaxy of colored stars and shattered glass over top. Edgar watched Johnny closely, waiting for him to mention his head problems any time something was passably relevant.

 

Johnny, however, was not one for relevant, and just mentioned it off-hand when there was a moment of silence about two hours into the project.

 

“So the other guys in my head sometimes kind of invade my body when I sing. Just a heads up.”

 

Jimmy laughed, which set Tenna off too. Devi was the only one who seemed to believe the statement at face value.

 

“Fucking 'scuse me?”

 

“Just thought you should know,” Johnny said with a shrug.

 

“Nny, come on,” Edgar prodded.

 

“What else should I say?!”

 

He wanted to say 'stop being childish' or 'you know what to say', but the energy to say anything wouldn't come. He glanced at his arm, at Johnny's arm, and even with long sleeves covering both of them, something cold and tired settled into his bones.

 

Jimmy and Tenna leaned around from the other side of the van where they'd been working on star splatter. Jimmy had most of the splatter on his face. “Wait, for real?”

 

Johnny focused hard on the spray pattern in front of him, avoiding curious gazes or angry glares. “Yeah, for real.”

 

He went on to explain as much as he had told Edgar – when it happened, that it had been occasional at first, that it had been more often lately, that it happened sometimes involuntarily either when performing or when certain things triggered old emotions, that he had used it for good things and it made the performances better, and that Edgar usually was what made it stop – but he did all of it while painting swirls near a brake light and wouldn't make any significant eye-contact.

 

“So half the time we're up there with an actual murderer and not you at all?” Devi asked.

 

“It's always me,” Johnny said. “Sometimes it's just like me with them dissolved in me too. Like instant lemonade.”

 

“I think it's fair to say the proportions aren't always even,” Edgar prompted, splattering a bit of silver paint on the back of the van.

 

Johnny bit his lip. “Also that.”

 

Tenna glanced between them. “Did something... happen?”

 

“It wasn't – ”

 

“He got angry and started trying to dig into my arm before he recognized me again and stopped,” Edgar said. It wasn't accusing, it was just what was.

 

Tenna's eyebrows shot up. “Um, holy shit.”

 

Johnny hunched his shoulders and stayed focused on his painting.

 

“So that could happen to any of us,” Devi said.

 

Edgar wanted to jump to Johnny's defense, like always. Wanted to say 'No! He'd never hurt you guys!', but Johnny had actually only made that promise about Edgar. Maybe the other versions of Johnny still thought Jimmy deserved to die. Maybe they'd try to finish what they started on Devi. Maybe Edgar could do nothing about anything.

 

Maybe he was just useless.

 

“Can we talk to them?” Jimmy said, creeping around the back of the van to get closer to Johnny.

 

Johnny looked up at him, the first willing eye-contact he'd had during the whole conversation. “What?”

 

“When it's the other ones, can we talk to them?”

 

Devi and Tenna yelled, “Jimmy!” at the same time and Tenna tried to swat him.

 

“I'd kinda like to meet them,” Jimmy said.

 

“At least one of them killed you,” Johnny told him.

 

“I know, but they're _you_.”

 

Johnny shook his head and looked back at his work on the van. “No, they're not. I'm them, maybe, but they aren't me.”

 

“So are we wasting our time decorating this thing right now?” Devi asked. “Are we taking our lives in our hands playing shit for you to sing?”

 

“No. I told you: I think I can control it.”

 

“Okay, well, you thought you could control it before and you apparently tried to rip Edgar's arms off, so forgive me for not being comforted.”

 

“It wasn't like that!” Johnny screamed, pressing his eyes shut. “It was just for a second! They wouldn't hurt him!”

 

“Yeah,” Devi said. “ _Him._ ”

 

The more Edgar listened to them arguing, the more he regretting having to open this wound at all.

 

Wounds. His arm itched.

 

“And _I_ wouldn't hurt you guys!” Johnny argued. “It's still mostly me almost all the time! It's minor!”

 

“ 'Mostly?' 'Almost?' You tried to slit your fucking wrists!” Devi shouted back. “Whether that's them doing it to you or you doing it in response to them, it's not even a little bit fucking _minor_.”

 

“Do you want to stop playing?!”

 

“No!”

 

They fell into stunned silence, Devi looking down at her paint-covered hands, Johnny at his corner of the van.

 

“Sorry,” Edgar said to no one, to everyone, to Johnny. “I thought this would work out differently.”

 

“No, you were right,” Johnny said quietly.

 

“You _really_ think you can control it?” Devi asked.

 

“Yes. I just fucked up because I was tired and shit. I can do it.”

 

“I kinda don't want to die,” Tenna said.

 

“I _wouldn't,”_ Johnny said miserably.

 

“But the other ones – ”

 

Johnny's hands tightened into fists and he pressed his eyes closed against tears. “I know! But they haven't! They won't!”

 

Edgar shuffled closer to him and tried to project supportive vibes.

 

Jimmy raised his hand. “I still want to play.”

 

“Of course you do,” Tenna said. “You think Nny is hot when he's scary. The rest of us still have a sense of self-preservation.”

 

“Fuck you too,” Johnny muttered.

 

Edgar took a long breath and took in the half-finished van. “Listen, what this comes down to is whether you trust Nny when he says he can control it. I do, and I'm the only one who has had a weird interaction with the other ones. I still want to play.”

 

Tenna put her hands on her hips. “You have the exact same affliction as Jimmy, dude. You like 'em scary. You aren't really objective about this.”

 

She was not completely wrong, but Edgar redirected the conversation anyway. “You don't know why any of us would want to keep doing this. Do _you_ want to stop?”

 

She dropped her arms with a frustrated grunt. “No. I like doing the makeup and driving all these cracky places and making up songs with you guys. I just don't want to get _stabbed.”_

 

“You _won't,”_ Edgar said firmly. He didn't give her time to protest, he just turned to Devi. “You said you want to keep going?”

 

Devi sighed and looked over the van. “Yeah. I sleep better with a consistent artistic outlet.”

 

“And? But?”

 

She put her hand partway over her mouth. “But he tried to kill me once.”

 

Johnny growled in frustration. “Listen, don't you think it would have happened already? Don't you think they would have woken up in my head while on stage, realized what they could get away with, and then slaughtered everyone while half of the audience thought it was part of the show? I've had them out so many times and nothing happened!”

 

“Then what was this with hurting Edgar?”

 

“I was just exhausted and overwhelmed, I couldn't keep it down anymore! And even then it was just that I squeezed his arm! There was no blood, there's not even a mark! You've done worse to me in total control of yourself than I have to anyone even with a cocktail of crazy person in me.”

 

“Fuck you, I have not.”

 

“You tried to break my face on a picnic table. You made sure I bled.”

 

She frowned and looked away.

 

Edgar clasped his hands together. “All we need to do is keep an eye on him. Not a suspicious eye, just make sure he's sleeping and shit. We need to take care of each other.” _So easy. No problem._

 

Tenna still looked nervous. “But if shit goes haywire we can bail, right?”

 

Johnny nodded, though he wouldn't look at her. “Yeah.”

 

“And you still want to be doing this?” Devi kicked his boot and gestured at him with a paintbrush. “Weird shit is invading your head while you're doing it and you're still cool?”

 

“Yeah, I have – ” He glanced at Edgar. “...I have things that keep me okay. So far, the benefits outweigh the risks. Until the other day, I hadn't passed out in a long time and I think that's because I let them out a bit when I sing. I think it would get worse if I stopped.”

 

Devi looked at him like he had something strange stuck to his face, like she had only just now seen him.

 

“I think you should come over and paint me with today,” she said.

 

“What?”

 

“You heard me. Can I peel you away from your boyfriend and attach you to a canvas for a bit?”

 

“I...” He glanced at Edgar probably to ask or confirm something, but Edgar, who had felt either numb or miserable for the better part of several days, was processing 'boyfriend' with a lopsided joy. “I guess?”

 

“Good,” she said, reaching for a can of paint. “Let's get this damn van finished.”

 

 

 

 

Johnny arrived at Devi's in the late afternoon. He hadn't been there in a while. It would have felt weird to show up even if she hadn't made a random invitation. The knock on her door echoed in the stairwell, followed by the sound of her locks.

 

She opened the door and leaned out toward him, looking around. “Good, just you.”

 

“What the fuck, did you think I'd bring Edgar?”

 

“I thought there was a possibility you were bonded to each other for life with Dib's 'alien technology' or something. Get in here.”

 

“Okaaaay...”

 

Devi had set up two easels and laid out an impressive spread of paint tubes and jars on every flat surface in her living room.

 

Johnny dumped his coat on her floor. “Damn, you were not fucking around.”

 

“I never fuck around,” she said, taking a seat at one of the easels. “Sit down.”

 

“Why does everything you say sound like it should be followed with 'or else'?”

 

“Because you hear voices. Sit.”

 

“Fuck you,” Johnny said. But he sat and picked up a brush, ran his thumb over the bristles.

 

“I sent Tenna over to your house. She and Edgar are going to sew some shit.”

 

Johnny looked up from the brush. “Does Edgar know that?”

 

“I'm sure he does _now.”_

 

“He'll be upset about not getting to play his game. I hope she's prepared.”

 

“What's he going to do, yell at her?”

 

“No, come on, it's Edgar. But he does this thing with his lip when he doesn't get to do the solitary thing he planned on doing. It's subtle, but you feel like garbage when you see it. She's going to be devastated.”

 

“This might be just you.”

 

He gripped both ends of the brush in his fists and let it sit in his lap. “Okay, what is this? What are you doing?”

 

She shrugged innocently. “I haven't seen you paint in a while.”

 

“And you want to say some weird shit about me and Edgar.”

 

“What the hell, Nny.”

 

“You do!”

 

“Fine!” She grabbed a tube of green paint and began smearing it on her canvas. “Maybe I'm just trying to figure out what's going on with you. Maybe I just want to make sure you still talk to other people. Maybe I'm still blown away that no one fought me when I said 'boyfriend'. Maybe I still think you getting upset if we touch your shoulder is weird when I've seen you have extended conversations sitting in Edgar's lap. Maybe I think it's fucking crazy that you have voices and static and other people in your head, but you think it will all be okay because Edgar just exists.”

 

“Maybe, you say.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

Johnny found a jar of red paint and dabbed some onto his canvas, blending and swirling it. It really had been a while since he'd done this. All his expression lately had been singing, and that was now getting a little dangerous. He could use this.

 

“Well, since you're _maybe_ concerned, it's not just that Edgar exists. It's that the others remember him too, and it's positive. So me seeing him like he is now, remembering the differences... that triggers the realization of where I am. Of who I am, I guess. It's not that he just exists, it's that he's existing differently than he used to.”

 

Devi began making large vertical strokes. “So without the power of Edgar's love beams or whatever, you would get stuck as one of the other guys?”

 

Johnny frowned while he swirled some black into the red. “I wish you wouldn't say it like that.”

 

“Love beams.”

 

“Ugh.”

 

“Seriously, though. What happens without Edgar?”

 

“I don't know. It wouldn't be great, but I don't think I'd be gone. They need me.”

 

 _“They_ need you? Your mirror friends?”

 

“Yeah, I'm the one who let them out in the first place, and if they want to express something, they have to go through me.”

 

“And when do they decide they need to express themselves?”

 

“It just happens sometimes, when I see certain things. It's usually only the most recent guy, but the first one has been here too. Less of him, which I'm grateful for, because he's a mess.”

 

“Oh, _he's_ a mess. But you're fine.”

 

“You know what? I have song lyrics instead of a body count in my notebook, so yeah. I'm fine.”

 

“And what are these disaster people doing with you? Taking turns?”

 

He brought in white, tried turning the red into bright pink. Pulled in a neon teal. There was a face in all this somewhere. He swirled the paint just as much with his thumb as the brush. “It's not like that. I don't think they're really conscious. It's just invading memory, so I don't think they can have an agenda. But memory kind of makes the person, you know? So if I have their memories, I... fight myself? I don't know, exactly. Sometimes it's both of them with me, if the feeling is strong or we all share it. Then I don't even know how many people I am, let alone which one.”

 

“Why did you even start letting them out? I thought you hated everything to do with them.”

 

“I don't want to _be_ them or anything. They were just useful. I could write better, sing better, perform better if they were helping to drive it. Artistic shit is more authentic if it comes from something real, you know that. And at least two of us share almost everything, it was so easy to collaborate. Two of us know exactly how it feels to murder, two know how it feels to die, all three of us are pretty good at self-loathing, two of us know how it feels to have you trying to cave our skulls in, two of us met Todd, I think we're all well-versed in hallucinating, two of us ...really like Edgar. But only one of us has the vehicle to deliver any of it. Only one of us can sing.”

 

“So you channeled your serial killer past lives for _art._ ”

 

“...yes. It sounds bad when you say it that way. Better than the other way around, though, right?”

 

“I can't believe you just let them do that.”

 

“Well, I'm always there, at least in part, so it's not like I clock out and wait for them to be done with my lungs. They need me to be their outlet as much as I needed them to make the thing real. Maybe it's all just my head trying to reconcile itself.” The painted face was not happy.

 

There was a pause for several moments filled with nothing but the sounds of bristles on canvas. Then Devi spoke again, never even looking up from her painting. “...and _two_ of you like Edgar?”

 

“Heh, yeah. That last one, he... had some trouble with that. But that's why Edgar isn't going to get hurt. And why I think the rest of you will be okay too.”

 

“We'll all be okay because one of your head crazies had a crush on an ex-Edgar?”

 

Johnny winced. “No, I mean they're able to recognize positive things, and when we share positive things, it brings me back faster. They were capable of decent shit, just only for certain people. The last me it was Edgar. The first me, it might have been you.” Devi frowned at him, but he frowned at his painting, not sure if it was his vision coming out or someone else's. “And it wasn't a 'crush.' It was just like a tangle of – I don't really have a word for it. But it was something. Edgar was important.”

 

“Does he know that?”

 

“No, I guess not.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“The last Edgar didn't know and it was about him. Why should this one know?”

 

She had blocked out some sort of figure in the center of her painting. A little alien, or a doll maybe. “I imagine it would help with that whole 'my head guys like you and won't murder you while I sing' thing.”

 

“Maybe. But he already believes me. So I really just don't want to bring it up unless I have to.”

 

“Why? What's the problem?”

 

Johnny looked between his brush and the canvas, trying to decide which one had betrayed him with this wild and frantic face taking shape in the paint. Trying to decide how much of this concern he could share with Devi, and how much she was already going to deduce. She'd already asked him here because she wanted to check on something about Edgar, but even if she hadn't, she have been be the easiest to tell...

 

“He's perfect.”

 

“Um, what?'

 

“He's perfect and that's fucked up. If he knew about the last me's tangle of feelings-y bullshit, he's start to question all this too. He'd wonder why he was here, and if he was doing well. But he shouldn't be like this, he shouldn't be able to _do_ this.”

 

“Okay, okay, whoa. Let's back up. What is 'this'?”

 

Johnny sighed so hard it was almost a snort. “Look, he was alone with TV for however long, right? Five years? He should be wildly naive or a really grimdark reboot or so stupidly optimistic he's an animated musical. He should – he should be worried that he's not in a relationship with a _girl_. He shouldn't _like_ me, nothing about me is an option to like on TV.”

 

“Give him some credit, though, he –“

 

But Johnny charged ahead. “He should be having some kind of 'Am I gay now?' meltdown! He should be telling me that you can't be in a relationship without sex, he should be using touch to magically fix me while the music jumps up a key or two and gets all fucking hopeful. But he's not! He's not doing any of it. He accepts no gender, he accepts fucking zero-sexuality, he's just totally fine! He shouldn't – ” He took a few gasps of air as his lungs caught up to his mouth. “He shouldn't be like this.”

 

“But he _is._ Why don't you think you're just outrageously lucky?” She looked away from her painting. “ 'Aren't I so lucky?', isn't that how it is?”

 

“Yeah, ' _All my friends are dead_ ',” Johnny sang back at her. “That's too much luck, Devi, that's not how we work.”

 

“We have houses we don't pay for. We're lucky.”

 

“We're not _lucky_ , we've been _arranged_.” Johnny wrapped his hands around his paintbrush and came close to snapping it half. “With Pepito and all the past memory... It's just not possible that he'd be like this with just himself and TV, he – ” He dropped his hands into his lap and gazed into Devi's ceiling. “I think he was made for me.”

 

Devi laughed and almost marred her painting. “That's surprisingly romantic of you!”

 

“No.” Johnny squeezed his eyes shut and forced the others away, forced their rage and their confusion and their fear and their revulsion back and under everything else. Of all times for them to find something to be triggered by, this was less than ideal. “No, no, I don't mean like soulmate bullshit, I mean I think he was literally manufactured and engineered to my specifications in some kind of plot to manipulate or control me and I didn't catch it until it was too late.”

 

She raised an eyebrow. “I'm sorry, when did _you_ get here, Dib?”

 

“Fuck you, I'm serious!”

 

“Okay, but this is really – ”

 

“It's not crazy, this is literally how our lives work. I know you guys because I tried to kill you once. We are invisible people who can still be in photos in indie magazines. The Anti-Christ lives two blocks away from here and he likes gingersnaps, normal kids next door, and video games. That Edgar was modified to suit me because the other me felt some kinda thing at him before he said he wanted to come back and make me happy is _really_ not a stretch. He's here being perfect at me because the last version of me would have liked that if he had been able to process it.”

 

 _“Jesus,_ Nny.”

 

“I know! And I don't know what they're going to do with this. I don't even know who _they_ are.”

 

“Well, we're not dead or anything yet, so why is it too late?”

 

He threw his hands up, flinging a few drops of paint onto Devi's floor. “Because what am I going to do now?! Stop feeling? Go home tonight and tell him, 'Hey, by the way, I think you're a potential construct made to manipulate me, let's watch a movie'?”

 

“Do you think you'd stop feeling something if you knew for sure?”

 

He sighed like it could deflate his entire body. “I don't think that's up to me. It's shit I didn't even know I could do, shit that is just outrageously outside the parameters I thought defined me. This isn't like, 'Hey, this fridge is also a freezer,' this is like 'Hey, this fridge is also a karaoke machine that spits lava.' So now I've got karaoke lava feelings and I am... historically _bad_ at getting rid of feelings.”

 

“That was a really specific example.”

 

“It's _weird_ ,” Johnny insisted.

 

“I'm not saying it isn't, just... Well done.” She considered her painting for a few seconds before giving the little doll figure purple pigtails. “Anyway, have you thought that maybe this is left over from another Edgar? He's not just TV, you know.”

 

“I'm not saying he is, I'm the last person saying he is. But I remember the last Edgar. He was _careful_ with me because he didn't want to _die_ , which you'll recognize as the most ideal model of a healthy relationship.”

 

“But you guys weren't...”

 

“No, it wasn't like this, obviously. But there were weird circumstances.”

 

“Well, you're not killing people this time, so that's already healthier. And you learned things from the other guys doing that, right?”

 

“Sort of. Not exactly useful daily facts, but things. Ways to adapt, ways to see people, ways to take people apart.”

 

“Then maybe Edgar was able to learn from some kind of fear adaptation and –”

 

“I _really_ don't want him to be afraid of me.”

 

“He's... _clearly_ not. He's like the opposite of afraid of you. That's not really what I meant.”

 

“But if he's basing how he feels on things he learned while afraid, I don't want...”

 

“This is really fucking you up, isn't it?”

 

“Yeah, a little! I could be playing right into some cosmic bullshit and I can't stop it! They could use Edgar to hurt me somehow and I took the fucking bait and now I'm so damn _fond_ of the bait that despite being concerned for _me,_ I'm also worried about the bait's well-being, and I'm – I'm fucked. I feel like I should find some way to end everything before he hits a wall in the form of one of the million problems with me, and yet I really don't _want_ to. I don't want this to end horribly because I don't want it to end at _all,_ but I also don't want it to go well if someone else is making it that way.”

 

Devi set down her brush. “Okay, okay. Let's walk through this. First, you don't know any of this is true. I know you've been right about _a lot_ of this supernatural shit, but consider that you just have a theory right now.”

 

“You know what else is a theory? _Gravity._ ”

 

“Okay, you're being dramatic. Listen to me. Even if this is all true, you guys already told Pepito to fuck off. You decided to do your own romance-y thing in the face of Satan, who clearly objected. How bad can whatever they might have used Edgar for be if _Satan_ isn't behind it?”

 

“They just – they exploited something I didn't know I had, and now I don't want to stop. I feel like I'm carrying a virus. If Edgar's some kind of spy robot, I'm just going to be spied on, because I can't make this shit _stop,_ and – fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I fucking _told_ him I didn't want to do this at first, I told him this would be a bad idea, _you_ told him it was a bad idea, _Pepito_ told him it was a bad idea, and _I'm_ the one who didn't listen.”

 

Devi sighed sympathetically. “It's fucked up. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Are you going to say something to him?”

 

“Yeah, 'Hey, I like you, also I think you and all your feelings are a fiction designed to lull me into a false sense of security. Neat, huh?' It would fuck him up.”

 

“What else can you do? Stay with him while quietly suspecting that all his feelings are some kind of Satanic algorithm?”

 

“I don't know.” Johnny shook his head. “I don't want him to be, but I don't know if I can convince myself that he's not now.” He clenched his hands into fists. “I shouldn't have said anything to you, now I'm convincing myself even more.”

 

“You--”

 

“And _you_ shouldn't say anything either. Not a word to Jimmy and Tenna.”

 

She held up her hands defensively. “Okay, okay.”

 

“I mean it.”

 

“So do I. It's your baggage. But maybe Edgar should hear about it.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe. But I think it would break his heart or something, so I'm going with, 'no'. I think he's the fairy tale kind of person who can die from that.”

 

“Just think about it.”

 

He rarely listened to anyone's advice but Edgar's lately, but he _did_ think about it. In every stroke and scrape of the brushes and in every moment he thought about it. The moment he closed Devi's door behind him late that evening, he thought about it. He thought about how even though he'd told her about it, he still felt stuck with it, still weighed down by it. Talking about your problems to make them better was more shit made up by TV, apparently.

 

He sat for a long while on the wall by the school where he'd met Devi the first time and tried to think. He tried to think of anything but Edgar being a romantic changeling, but even with the stone wet and freezing and sending sharp cold through his jeans to distract him, Johnny couldn't concentrate on anything but Edgar.

 

What if Edgar _knew_? What if this was some plan? Maybe he and Pepito and Squee knew each other and Edgar had drawn the short straw of the operation. Though if this was the case, Edgar was an astounding actor. Johnny had never seen the equal of Edgar's joy about their relationship, even on TV.

 

And if Edgar didn't know... Well, Johnny knew _he_ didn't like the persistent notion that his thoughts weren't his own. How was he going to introduce that same nagging idea to Edgar too?

 

But then what if Devi was right, and this was leftovers from the previous Edgar? Then no wonder Johnny's previous self had reacted to just talking about the possibility; this was something of _his_ Edgar and would be the first time he'd be able to see Edgar clearly enough to understand himself. If everything Johnny thought was true then current Edgar was made to be perfect for the _last_ version of Johnny.

 

Edgar had accepted so much so easily. Bleeding, songs, Son of Satan, alien necklaces, suicide attempts. Exactly the sorts of things that would have served the other Edgar well in the world he was stuck in. Had they altered Johnny too? Was the only reason Johnny was able to feel anything for Edgar because he was programmed to respond only to him? And then Edgar would have been created just to ensure the maximum amount of happiness he's always saying he wants to bring to Johnny.

 

The biggest frustration was anger at someone else presuming to know what he'd like layered on top of anger at himself that whoever was responsible got it so _right_. Johnny didn't just _like_ Edgar, he wasn't some novelty that Johnny was fond of. Edgar was an actual facet of Johnny's life, Edgar was someone he was afraid he needed, and Edgar was someone he'd be more than a little upset to lose. Edgar fit comfortably in and around everything. Johnny hadn't been exaggerating when he told Devi that Edgar was perfect.

 

The problem was when Edgar described Johnny the same way. Johnny was not perfect for Edgar, he was not even _good_ for him. He was not everything Edgar had ever wanted, because he was nothing Edgar could have ever learned to want. Johnny was never going to be after the fairy tale he kept shattering for Edgar, nor was he ever going to be _part_ of the fairy tale, so he didn't understand what Edgar was chasing in him.

 

Not that he was being chased anymore, really. He had been once, but even now, as he doubted whether Edgar was a real human, he was planning to go home to him, sing songs with him, spend the night in bed next to him, and then in a few weeks squeeze into a van beside him and always have him within arm's reach no matter where they went or what happened to them.

 

Someone on the cosmic supernatural side had to be laughing at how completely they had Johnny caught with just a sweet dork in a pair of glasses.

 

 

 

Edgar's brain healed more slowly than his arm. He acknowledged that things were not his fault when Johnny told him so, but as much as he _acknowledged,_ he didn't seem to _believe._ He was distracted. Johnny found chores that Edgar usually enjoyed doing left undone for the first time since Johnny had moved in. He stole glances at Johnny's arm while he worked on the sewing projects Tenna had assigned him and sighed or bit his lip. He flinched if he saw Johnny holding even a butter knife. If Johnny was alone in a room for too long, Edgar called his name, making some flimsy excuse as to why when Johnny responded.

 

 _This better not be what_ 'everyone needs to take care of each other and keep an eye on Nny' _looks like. I'm going to go fucking crazy._

 

 _Or crazi_ _ er _ _? Maybe._

 

It wasn't that Edgar's concern was bad, it just often took forms that felt like being treated like a child or a loss of trust. And if Edgar didn't trust Johnny, fucking no one would.

 

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

 

Edgar stood in the doorway to Johnny's room, shoulder pushed up against the frame.

 

“Uh, okay?”

 

“I just feel weird in here.”

 

Johnny's gaze immediately darted to the door down the hall where the book still cataloged all the things in Edgar's house was sitting innocuously on a bookshelf.

 

“It's not that,” Edgar said. Johnny looked back at him. “I don't know what it is. I just feel a little trapped and I'm running out of distractions.”

 

“You got used to the wild freedom of being in a roaming band, free to sleep in whatever exotic shitty motel you could find,” Johnny joked, spreading his hands in front of him as though setting up grand scenery. “Now you've got the road in your veins and it will never leave you.”

 

He could have used any word but 'veins' if he'd thought before the words came out. Instead, Johnny's words made Edgar flinch and pull his wrist close to his chest. The mark from his accident in the van hadn't been bandaged for a few days, but it was still scabbed in places and was surrounded by an obvious pink. Johnny's wrist looked about the same.

 

“Sorry,” Johnny said. “I didn't –“

 

“No, no, I know. I'm still just – ”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny motioned to the door. “You good to go?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, let's go.”

 

It was damn near automatic that they'd just walk to the school, even though there was nothing there they needed anymore. The closer they got, the more Edgar's shoulders relaxed and he smiled properly.

 

“This place feels even smaller than it used to,” Edgar said as he gazed into the sky. “I can't imagine being limited by this anymore.”

 

“Was it always this small? I'm having a hard time imagining that this was ever _anything,_ let alone _enough_.”

 

“I guess when you don't have a choice...”

 

Maybe this was all he needed. Maybe Johnny would just take Edgar outside every day and he'd eventually start smiling and doing things normally again.

 

They rounded the corner then and stopped short in the middle of the street between the block of houses and the school. They glanced at each other and back to the corner where the Son of a Satan and a fairly normal-looking dude lived in a house that wasn't really there. A house that looked just how they'd left it and like something had completed changed at the same time.

 

“Does that look weird to you?” Edgar asked.

 

“Yeah. Do you want to try to...?”

 

Edgar fiddled with the thing from Dib on his neck. “Yeah.”

 

The house looked _empty_ more than anything else. There had always been curtains drawn over every window and little in the way of decoration or flash that would have made it stand out, but it felt less _there_ than it ever had before.

 

Johnny hovered his foot over the first step for a few seconds. Edgar leaned forward, making sure to catch what Johnny was doing on his necklace camera for Dib. They both may have been disappointed when Johnny's foot hit the step instead of passing through it.

 

“Maybe we could just drop by for a friendly chat,” Johnny said. “Ask if Todd has seen the show.”

 

“Just Todd?”

 

“I think I've already seen Pepito watching.”

 

“And you didn't tell anyone?!”

 

“He was fine, he was just watching.”

 

“Nny, what if – ”

 

“God, it's _fine_ , okay? Please just fucking trust me when I tell you it's fine.”

 

Edgar's lip twitched. _“Fine.”_

 

When Johnny knocked on the door, it echoed into the house and right back into his bones. He'd never felt anything as empty as this house. It would be less empty if it weren't there. It contained more empty than it should have been able to hold.

 

Edgar's hands gripped his shoulders.

 

Johnny startled. “Whoa, what?”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah, what's wrong?”

 

“You were just frozen. What happened?”

 

“I just felt – ” Johnny twisted the key on his neck between his fingers and the empty feeling swirled around his ankles. “There's nothing in there.”

 

“Did they move? Can you just move away when you're the son of Satan? That's such a mundane thing to do.”

 

“No, I mean, there is _nothing_ in there. Are you recording?”

 

“Yes? What are you doing?”

 

“I just wonder...” The metal key in his fingers was so cold it burned. _“'Johnny.'”_

 

The necklace tugged him with such force his head snapped back and he slammed his chin against the door in front of him. He'd hardly staggered back before he felt Edgar grab onto him.

 

“Holy _shit_ , are you okay?!”

 

Johnny nodded and rubbed his neck where the cord had strained against his skin. He swallowed and let out some unsteady breaths. “I'm good, I'm good.”

 

“What the hell happened?”

 

“It's the key to Hell is what happened. The reaction is so much stronger... There's just this house keeping the key and Hell apart now.”

 

Edgar relaxed his hold on Johnny. “Wasn't that all there was before?”

 

Johnny shook his head. There'd been so much more in that house before than just Pepito and Squee's stuff, if it ever even contained that. “You don't feel it, do you?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Too normal and useless, I guess.”

 

“Come on, don't do that.”

 

Edgar only shrugged again. “Sure.”

 

“We should get out of here.” Johnny started back down the stairs, but Edgar wasn't moving.

 

“At least tell me what we're running from.”

 

“It's just – you felt the place was weird when you saw it too, right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Johnny looked up at him, saw him up on a high platform, saw splattering, shattering, red, and winced. “Can you... come down here?”

 

Edgar gripped his elbows against the slight cold and followed Johnny down the stairs. Whatever smiling he'd been doing was gone, and there was some tired purple under his eyes. “Do you remember this?” he asked.

 

“Which this?”

 

“I remember going door to door with you for something. I just had such a strong image of following you down stairs on someone's porch and I knew it wasn't us. This us.”

 

“Door to door? Like selling shit?”

 

“I don't think so. I think we were looking for something. Or someone, maybe.”

 

“That's good, I don't remember being a fundraiser kinda guy.” Edgar didn't laugh, so Johnny simply kept talking. “I don't know if I remember. It's hard to separate anything. It's like everything I did the second time around had you attached in some way, so it's hard to see anything I did without you in it, even if I'm sure I would have been alone. Just now it was just – I saw you up a little higher, and it was suddenly all...”

 

“Yeah. Sorry.” Edgar hugged his elbows a little tighter. “Let's just go somewhere else. Tell me about the house.”

 

They walked along the front of the school toward the public library. “You felt something was weird just now too. I think I could feel more because of the key,” Johnny explained. “It wasn't because there's something lacking in you.”

 

Edgar smiled weakly. “It's nice of you to say that.”

 

Johnny frowned, but continued on. “It was just that I could feel that it was so much closer. That everything that used to be in that house was gone. But it was more gone than it should be. Emptier than just removing the furniture. When I think about how it was before, I think the house used to be fuller than it should have been too. Like Todd and Pepito had a few realities all tucked in there at once or something and the house as a big folded spot. It's more obvious when it's missing than when it's there. I'm almost tempted to ask Dib about it.”

 

“And you think that's all the key and not just you being special.”

 

Johnny stopped walking. “Yes! What is _wrong_ with you?”

 

He regretted it the moment he heard himself say it. He knew what was wrong. He was pretending some of the same shit wasn't wrong with him.

 

“I can't just shake this stuff off like you can!” Edgar cried. “I'm _trying!_ But I can't stop seeing you bleeding in a bathtub over and over! I see it when I look at you, I see it when my arm itches, I see it when I try to do _anything_ for you because I think if I'd just done that thing _before,_ then maybe...!”

 

Edgar in tears was almost as bad as Edgar bleeding, and Johnny had been seeing it more and more lately.

 

“It wasn't _you_!” Johnny heard a strain of desperation in his own voice. Uncomfortable. Terrifying. “I told you: it wasn't what you did, or what you didn't do, it just _was_. It almost wasn't even _me_ , let alone _you._ It's not your fault.”

 

Edgar sniffed. “Yeah, the part of me that understands words knows you keep saying that, but the rest of me doesn't feel like it can listen.”

 

“What else can I tell you?!”

 

“I don't know. I just feel like I can't do anything. I wasn't able to stop that, I wasn't able to stop you remembering, or keep static and Pepito and everything from happening. Fuck, I might have _caused_ all that. The most good I do is – I'm just here to have a _basement_ for you.”

 

“You think I would have been okay with just your basement and not you? Ignoring literally _everything else_ you've ever done for me, your basement didn't pull me bleeding out of a bathtub.”

 

“I know, I know.” He sniffed a wiped his eye with the heel of his palm. “Sorry.”

 

“I'm trying to think of what the other you would have told me.”

 

Edgar jumped and reached toward Johnny in a flurry and his song lurched like it would vomit a few notes. “No, no! God, no, don't do that again!”

 

“I'm not, I'm not. I wasn't. It's fine.” _I'm the one who was cutting into my own flesh, why is he the one having a worse time with it? Am I not having a bad enough time? Is this going to come bite me in the ass later?_

 

“You can't do that again,” Edgar begged. “Don't let them in any closer. I don't want something else to happen to you.”

 

“I have to _sometimes_ ,” Johnny said gently. “Or they'll start building up and shutting me down again.”

 

“I just don't want – ” He shuddered and pulled his coat tighter around him and his song lagged behind them, slow and struggling. “Can we keep walking?”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny nodded toward the library and they took half a block in silence.

 

This was not Johnny's strong suit. He'd never been good at comforting or helping because he was usually the cause of someone needing comfort or help. Before Edgar happened, Johnny and the others had to let time take care of their emotional wounds or agree to exchange blood for blood in order to keep moving forward. Most often, isolation took care of their problems: you can't stay angry with the only other people in the world.

 

Now, Johnny had to try something else.

 

He just started talking, hoping that somewhere the feelings he had on the surface would give way to the deeper ones Edgar probably needed. Somewhere in this hideous spew of feelings was likely to be something that would help. “I don't know what would have happened to me if I'd remembered all the stuff about killing the rabbit without you there. Or any of it. Anything I remembered and then passed out from. Without you there, I don't know if I would have lasted this long.”

 

Edgar bit his lip, but didn't respond, so again, Johnny carried on without the input he expected.

 

“It was not only not your fault, but I think you kept it from happening a lot earlier. I told you before we left that you're the best fucking thing that's ever happened to me. I don't know if you just didn't believe me or what, but – ”

 

“I believed you. Was the best thing anyone's ever said to me.”

 

“So...”

 

Edgar sighed and looked at the pavement as notes clanged and sank from his song like they were drowning. “Did it have to happen at all?”

 

“You couldn't have – You can't make the stuff in my head go away by just … liking me a lot. I'm probably always going to be a little broken, unless some demonic alien shit happens and replaces my brain or something. I think I would have always been like this somehow, even without remembering.”

 

“So you're saying I can't fix it for you.”

 

“I wish you could. If it were something that could be fixed, I think you'd be the one who could do it.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I'm not doing this shit out of spite or for the fun and attention. If I were, you probably _could_ just like me hard enough that I'd transform into less of an asshole, but in this case, I don't think you can. You just make it better and keep me _me_ longer.”

 

“That doesn't feel like enough.”

 

“Maybe not from your end.”

 

“I was supposed to make you happy and you're cutting your wrists open.”

 

“That's a single event that I'm still not sure I was totally responsible for. Other than that, I'm great. You're great.”

 

They stood in front of the library's tall columns that awkwardly offset its tiny staircase. Edgar still looked so small and miserable. He laughed softly, his breath visible in the chill. “This is a TV problem, isn't it? I can't save the day, or you, or anything just by caring a lot.”

 

“No, I don't think so. The rainbow bears have lied to you.”

 

There was no motion for a while, not even a car on the street, and then Edgar reached out and grabbed Johnny's hand. It was startling, but not upsetting or violating.

 

“I might keep trying to do it anyway.”

 

“That's okay with me, just don't fuck yourself up over it.”

 

“I'll try, but, but, I really need – ” He looked up from staring at their hands and then pulled Johnny into a hug. At first, with his face half-buried in Edgar's scarf, Johnny didn't think Edgar was going to finish. “I need you not to go. You have to _stay._ If I lose you like that, I don't know that I wouldn't try to go with you.”

 

Johnny's fingers twisted into Edgar's coat. “Holy shit, Edgar.” Maybe this was terrifying? It should be, probably? He felt that it was terrifying somewhere in him, but it was muted somewhat by feeling flattered? Possessive? Even more attached to Edgar, proud of having him, wanting to say the same things back to him.

 

Edgar's song reached for Johnny like it was trying to escape itself, notes and words here and there pulling away from the sludge the rest of the song had become.

 

“I just want you to understand,” Edgar said. “I know it's crazy, but it's how I feel anyway.”

 

Johnny tried to step away, but for the first time he could remember, Edgar didn't let go.

 

“Please, please, I'm sorry” he said, his arms tightening around Johnny's back. “Just a little bit longer.”

 

Edgar made him do strange things. He always had, no matter what lifetime it was. So instead of running or pushing, Johnny relaxed into the hug, held onto Edgar and let himself be held. It wasn't horrible. It was okay, even. And Edgar needed it.

 

Edgar's song calmed and the dissonance that had seeped into it began to lose its hold on the melody. He might be okay after all.

 

“It's okay,” Johnny said about everything. “I don't think I'll be going to meet Pepito any time soon. And that can be entirely your fault, if you want.”

 

Edgar relaxed his hold on Johnny, though still was not quite ready to let him go. “You think you'd go to Hell?”

 

“My odds are at least two out of three. I'm a scary asshole and I've stolen everything I own. Sometimes from children and old people.”

 

Edgar stepped back and looked into Johnny's face, his hands stuck at Johnny's elbows. “I still don't think – ”

 

“ _Take me how I am, 'cause you know I'll never change,”_ Johnny sang. _“I was born to stare at who stares back at me.”_

 

Edgar's breath caught in his throat as Johnny kept going: “ _If I make it up to that big show in the sky, all I really want..._ ”

 

“ _Is my TV and you_ ,” Edgar finished with him.

 

“Yeah. Exactly.”

 

Edgar smiled at him. “We'll be okay?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “We'll be okay.” This reassurance had always gone the other way, and Johnny not only had zero proof but mostly evidence to the contrary. Still, he found he absolutely believed it.

 

“Do you want to get a Freezie?” Edgar's song scraped itself off the floor and pieces of it started to sound normal.

 

“It's almost cold enough to snow.”

 

Edgar took Johnny's hand in his. “Yes it is. Do you want to get a Freezie?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

 

 

A List of ~~Weird~~ Things:

 

One: Tenna missed driving. Not that she didn't find little places to drive to in their small town – she definitely went to that grocery store when she and Devi had to stock up – but it wasn't the long distance _endurance_ driving that she'd been getting used to over the last few months. There were no hours of highway behind and before her, no hypnotizing gentle curves of asphalt at three in the morning, just five minute runs to the convenience store with bullshit stop signs and traffic lights.

 

As much as she enjoyed some time to relax and fortify their costumes, she missed the nights they all piled into the van soaked in post-performance euphoria and glitter, everyone shouting over and with each other until they burned out and it was Tenna and a van full of half-asleep people draped over the seats and each other. Jimmy's tablet leaving a faint blue light on everything. The rustle of paper from the back while Johnny wrote lyrics or love notes or whatever he got up to with that notebook and Edgar. Devi constantly adjusting the volume on the stereo when Tenna thought she was asleep.

 

This didn't come with a trip around the drive-thru, no matter who she brought with her.

 

Two: Devi was far friendlier and affectionate when Jimmy spent the night with them. There were at least three partly insane explanations for this, and no normal ones. Either Devi liked Jimmy an awful lot (insane), or Devi was trying to keep Jimmy from liking _her_ (insane, but legitimate), or hanging out with Jimmy reminded her of how much better a choice Tenna was (insane, but ultimately preferable).

 

Tenna liked Jimmy and she'd been very pleased when Devi decided she liked him (tolerated him?) too, but she hadn't expected Jimmy's presence to be required for Tenna to really enjoy Devi's company properly. This wasn't exactly the arrangement she'd been looking forward to.

 

Three: Jimmy? Everything was wrong with Jimmy and nothing was wrong with Jimmy and it was massively fucked up. Jimmy was going to explode one day, and Tenna would only be able to say she had a part it keeping from happening earlier. Jimmy was on a collision course with Crazy Town and his friends were only successful in causing minor detours on his route. Maybe this band thing was to help Johnny's head and improve their lives (eventually?), but as far as Tenna could figure, Jimmy stood to gain the most if they became even casually visible. Tenna could switch around as she chose, Devi didn't like people enough to interact with them even if they could see her, Edgar seemed happy enough that Johnny could see him, and Johnny... probably wasn't going to get better no matter how visible he was. But Jimmy could find someone or learn to speak fucking German or something.

 

Jimmy was spending the night again. Tenna and Devi had missed him in a weird way. That, and Jimmy's heater was broken. He'd spent several nights trying to endure it before he told everyone. They'd all gotten together for lunch (swiped from the convenience store) and Edgar had mentioned something about how nice his own bed was in comparison to hotel beds. Somewhere in the ensuing conversational chaos that erupted from that innocent statement, Jimmy mentioned that the hotel beds were all warmer than his currently and the news that his generator had died was finally dragged out of him. Arrangements were made to store him with Devi and Tenna immediately.

 

Sometimes she considered that she and Devi were not a couple only because the universe wanted to preserve a place for Jimmy to sleep in case of emergency. Which didn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither did the fact that Edgar had an extra bedroom that he wouldn't let anyone use. How much privacy does Johnny _need_?

 

Jimmy could have stayed in Tenna's half the house, but then again, so could Tenna. Instead they both camped out on Devi's living room floor in an expertly constructed blanket fort, sharing thoughts and ideas with each other that rarely made it beyond the plush walls.

 

“Where'd you get the lip ring, Jimmy?”

 

“A guy.”

 

Tenna narrowed her eyes. “Just a guy? Like, a guy who is licensed to poke holes in people or just literally a guy?”

 

“Could have been either, I guess. He said he knew what he was doing.”

 

 _God, the infection alone..._ “Aren't you our first aid guy? What if you get hideously infected?”

 

“I feel fine.”

 

“Yeah, now. Wait until it festers for a month.”

 

“It'll be fine. He sterilized everything. I watched him. It's cool actually. I bet you'd like it, Devi. Stabbing people who want to be stabbed, you know?”

 

“Ha. Ha.” Devi rolled onto her side. “So did you do it by cover of darkness or what?”

 

“It was the middle of the night,” Jimmy said. “I had him come pick me up and take me to the shop since I can't drive.”

 

Tenna nearly hit the ceiling. “Dude! He could have been an ax murderer! Or held you for ransom!”

 

“Instead I just got what I wanted and talked to some dude who could see me for a while.”

 

“We are teaching you to drive as soon as all the snow melts,” Tenna told him. “This is fucked up.”

 

Devi was a bit calmer about the situation. “What did you talk about?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Tattoos and stuff, mostly. He liked my stars.” Jimmy held up his arm as though Devi and Tenna hadn't seen them a million times. “He asked about the invisible thing, but that's really weird to explain to people. Nny is probably right when he says no one will ever get that.”

 

“And this was while he was putting a hole in your lip?”

 

“Uh, no, you don't talk during that. Duh.”

 

“How long were you there?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Most of the night, I guess.”

 

Tenna poked at his arm. “You didn't wake up with any weird tattoos you didn't ask for or anything, did you? Do you need me to check your back?”

 

“No. We just hung out.”

 

“'Hung out',” Devi mimicked.

 

Jimmy was lying on his back but glared in her general direction. “What? What is that supposed to mean?”

 

“I'm just wondering how many body mod guys you're going to start sneaking off to make out with in the future.”

 

“I can't make out with people with this so fresh!”

 

“That experience talking?”

 

“Oh my god, what the hell! You're teasing me about this instead of glad I'm not being 'unrealistic' about Nny and Edgar?”

 

“So you _did.”_

 

“I'm not fucking telling you!”

 

“Which means you _did.”_

 

Tenna snickered, but shoved Devi. “Okay, okay, stop. He's right.”

 

Jimmy closed his eyes and sniffed smugly. “Ha.”

 

“You gotta tell me what that's like, though, if you did,” Tenna told him. “Like fuck Nny is ever going to tell me.”

 

Jimmy flailed his arm at her, but failed to actually hit her.

 

“Nny wouldn't put up with make outs,” Devi said. “You kiss Nny once, quickly, _maybe_ monthly.”

 

“That is _definitely_ not true,” Tenna told her.

 

“On average,” Devi said.

 

“I'm gonna ask Edgar,” Tenna said. “I bet he's just dying to tell somebody. He seems like the sleepover and talk about boys type, don't you think? We could paint his nails.”

 

“So you guys still didn't figure anything out, huh?” Jimmy asked.

 

Tenna stopped smiling and sighed. She'd hoped they'd go a little longer pretending that wasn't an issue. “Uh, no.”

 

“Okay,” Jimmy said. “I mean, I think that's weird, but okay.”

 

Devi said nothing, so Tenna jumped on the defensive. “What's weird about it?”

 

“I don't know, like, can't you just make out and decide or something?”

 

Devi frowned. “Is that how everyone solves this issue around here? Holy shit.”

 

“I'd be happy to,” Jimmy told her, “but none of my test subjects are interested.”

 

Tenna tried to laugh. “I'm having the same problem!”

 

“You want to kiss me instead?” Jimmy suggested.

 

“You just said you have a lip thing, asshole.”

 

“Oh, yeah.” He glanced over at her. “But you'd have tried if I didn't?”

 

Tenna shrugged. “Maybe.”

 

Devi rolled back onto her back. “You're both fucked up.”

 

“Hey, I've got books that back us up,” Jimmy defended.

 

“Those are called porn, Jimmy.”

 

“Fuck you!” He hurled a small pillow at her. “It's called several chapters of 'The Developing Mind', thank you very much!”

 

“Okay, okay!”

 

“So we're normal! _You're_ the fucked up one.”

 

“Fine, whatever.” She threw his pillow back. “You know Nny would be fucked up in this scenario too, right?”

 

“He kisses Edgar,” Jimmy said defensively.

 

“I think about that a lot,” Tenna interrupted. Maybe she could derail this conversation from getting too serious again.

 

Devi craned her neck toward Tenna to try to look at her while still lying on her back. “You _do?”_

 

“Do you think it's just like a regular kiss but someone is also taking steel wool to your face while it happens?”

 

Devi sputter-laughed into her hands. “Oh my god, oh my god, I'm going to ask them.”

 

Tenna clawed at her in an attempt to smack her shoulder. “Don't you dare!”

 

“God, I really wanna know now,” Jimmy said. “Do you think Edgar would let me kiss him if I say it's for science?”

 

Tenna laughed.“Edgar does not love science as much as you do. He also loves Nny more than he loves you, so I'm gonna say your odds are not good.”

 

“Maybe if I act really pathetic or something,” Jimmy said.

 

Devi let out a puff of air. “That will probably work if Nny is straight up dead. And maybe not even then.”

 

Tenna nodded seriously. “Yeah, Edgar likes 'em dead.”

 

“Oh my _god,_ ” Devi moaned, “that is _not_ what I meant!”

 

Tenna grinned – probably adorably, if she had to classify it– and as much as she was making a fuss, Devi smiled back.

 

“I'm never going to be able to look at Edgar with a straight face again,” Devi said.

 

“You're welcome,” Tenna told her. “This is why you keep me around.”

 

Four: Lately, she'd been considering what would happen if Edgar and Johnny were no longer with them. Not that she expected it, or wanted it, or even knew why the thought occurred to her, but she thought that she could live with it.

 

 

 

 

Johnny listened to Edgar's song improve day by day, just like he watched their arms do the same. Edgar had rededicated himself to making sure Johnny was so happy that he forgot to be broken. It was cute, and the kind of excessive sweet you'd expect in a fairy tale, though Johnny was amazed to find out how much pressure being happy put on him. Edgar had recovered so recently and was still a bit fragile if his song was any indication, so Johnny carried a sort of deranged responsibility to be as okay as possible as long as possible for the sake of not breaking Edgar.

 

Tenna dumped more sewing work on Edgar, particularly things meant for Johnny. Hems were hems on anyone, but modifications required a body to make them around, so Johnny played Barbie for Edgar every so often while he tried to make up the skills needed to do what Tenna had asked.

 

“I liked _hemming_ ,” Edgar muttered while pinning a shirt tighter around Johnny's ribs. “I don't know why she thinks 'I can sew a straight line' means I can alter a shirt.”

 

“Just put glitter on it when you're done, it won't matter.”

 

Edgar laughed. “Can do. You can put your arms down.”

 

“Am I still going to have a shirt when you're done?”

 

“I'm not _that_ bad, though you're welcome to supervise.” He took several steps back and looked Johnny over. “Yeah, I guess that looks okay.”

 

“Just okay? How am I going to blow the minds of the visible masses looking just 'okay'?”

 

“You could do that in a trash bag if we put glitter on it.”

 

“You're weird, Edgar.”

 

“Mmm.” He came closer and knelt on the floor to put some marks on Johnny's shirt before removing the pins. “That's that for now. You can take it off and I'll pretend I know what I'm doing with it.”

 

Johnny pulled the shirt over his head while trying to keep the shirt he was wearing under it from flipping up too. He fought with it for a few seconds before he felt Edgar tug on the the undershirt down.

 

“I got it.”

 

The Homicides shirt popped off his head.

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Sure.” He bit his lip looking at the hem of Johnny's shirt. “You know, I don't want to pry, and I don't know for sure, but I think you've lost weight.”

 

Johnny poked at his own hip. “From _where?_ ”

 

“It's just that Tenna made this shirt fit you really well when we started, and there's more room in it now than there used to be.”

 

“Huh.” He looked up at Edgar, but it was apparently a larger issue than 'huh.' “Uh, sorry, should I have said something else...?”

 

“I just think that maybe eating more would help with the passing out.”

 

“I need to feed the guys in my head?”

 

“No, you need to feed _you_.”

 

“You really are the mom friend.”

 

 _“Boyfriend,_ actually.”

 

It was somehow weirder than when Devi had said it, but Johnny nodded. “Yeah, okay. I'll try, I guess?”

 

“We can ask Jimmy if there could be any other causes.”

 

“I – can we just try the food thing first?”

 

Edgar nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

 

Edgar really was trying to help, even if he was going a little overboard. Johnny could endure it until Edgar mellowed out. In the meantime, he just tried to smile and keep things as 'okay' as possible. There was a balance to strike here, however. Later, Edgar would probably want to hear about how the static song had infected Johnny a little, but not today. Today it would hurt him. Today he might not be able to bounce back from it.

 

Locked in a tiny part of the back of Johnny's brain were notions he was afraid of – burning the house down, cutting into his own skin – that had still taken hold of him. They'd been planted there by songs of all fucking things, but they were still there and he couldn't shake them. Edgar was optimistically charging forward and trying to take care of Johnny while these little seeds of things still sat in him, waiting to happen, or waiting to happen _worse_.

 

He sat in Edgar's bedroom disinterestedly helping to sort laundry, thinking not of folding shirts but of the entire house on fire, of all the things they'd lose, of how scared Edgar would be, of how Edgar could _die,_ and all of that would be absolutely terrible and – why was he reacting to this like someone _else_ had threatened to do it, like it was a lingering possibility and not that he heard it in a song?

 

Later, on the couch with Edgar, watching an old horror film both revolutionary and hilariously bad and his first thought when glancing the skin on his wrists was that he could try again. He shook the feeling off, and then thoughts of running away immediately after. None of those were him, he was sure of it. What purpose did burning his own house down and slitting his wrists serve to the static, or the voices, or the Not Pepito People? Maybe it was just funny to them. Maybe he'd been funny every time. Maybe some people in the sky were hoping for round four soon.

 

He could defy them by staying here, with Edgar, alive and not burning anything down.

 

 _God, that is_ _ such _ _a low bar._

 

Out of nowhere, Edgar's hand brushed his thigh and Johnny shrieked so loudly he briefly overpowered the television, sending himself halfway off the couch and Edgar into a mild panic.

 

“Whoa, whoa! What happened?! Are you okay?!”

 

“What were you doing?!”

 

“Nothing!”

 

“You were touching my leg!”

 

“I didn't mean to be, I'm sorry. It was an accident. Did I hurt you?”

 

Johnny shook his head while his heart raced. Maybe it was ridiculous to react to _Edgar_ like this, but he had been warned with a clever map analogy a few months ago. “No, just startled me.”

 

“I'm sorry.” He sat back on the couch and left ample space beside him. “You okay to sit down again?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Johnny slowly took a seat next to him and tried to even out his breathing. If it wasn't supernatural bullshit, it was this weird 'boyfriend' thing. The latter was preferable, of course, but it was frustrating that even _Edgar_ wasn't free of landmines.

 

“Is there something else I should be doing?” Edgar asked. “So you don't feel like I'm being creepy?”

 

Johnny pulled his knees up to his chest. “No, you do enough.”

 

“I'll try to pay more attention from now on, okay? I don't want you to think you can't trust me.”

 

“I can, I do. It's not you.”

 

It definitely was not Edgar. Johnny trusted Edgar with things he barely trusted himself with. If he did not trust Edgar, there was no one in the world he was capable of trusting. There were just lines even Edgar didn't have the clearance to cross yet, if ever.

 

“I don't want you to be afraid of me,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny laughed, though he hadn't meant to. “You're not scary, Edgar.”

 

“You know what I meant.”

 

“Yeah. It just reminded me of something.”

 

“Does it help if I tell you I won't push? Ever? For anything?”

 

“I can't stop being surprised by shit.”

 

“I mean I want you to know there's no intent. That nothing I do is because I'm trying to get your clothes off or anything.”

 

“Yeah, I know.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“You're not like me, are you?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean I'm not terribly interested in taking anyone's clothes off, and I am the absolute opposite of interested in anyone taking off mine. The only time I think about it is when it seems like an imminent _threat._ Just the _idea_ of someone cramming their hands between my legs makes me feel like my soul needs to leave my body after I tear all my skin off. I can't imagine anything more violating.”

 

“I don't want to do anything violating.”

 

“I know. But I have the feeling you don't feel the same way about all that if it were to happen to you.”

 

“I'm … curious,” Edgar admitted. “But television can make you curious about all sorts of things. It's not a big deal.”

 

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “I'm pretty sure people have been doing this since before television was a thing.”

 

“I guess. But I'm still not pushing for anything. If there is ever a situation where we do other than what we are now, it'll be because you told me that you positively wanted to.”

 

“And if that never happens?”

 

“Then it never happens.”

 

“This is like my head being broken, okay? Do you get that? You can't boyfriend hard enough to change this.”

 

“I'm not trying to. I don't want to.”

 

Of all people to believe about this, or anything, it was Edgar, and _still_ Johnny thought it was never going to be as simple as 'I won't ever ask for this, forever'.

 

“Okay,” Johnny said, for lack of anything better.

 

Edgar smiled. Cautious, sad? Something like that. “I promise, okay? You'll see. In the meantime, I'll do the best I can not to startle you.”

 

“Alright.”

 

“You okay?”

 

“Where do you think you learned that?” Johnny asked.

 

Edgar tilted his head, just a little. “Learned what?”

 

_To be so understanding, to be selfless, to be patient, to be scared and worried and keep going, to respect so easily, to accommodate every little thing I throw at you as though you've been programmed to do it,_

 

_to be perfect._

 

Johnny relaxed and leaned into Edgar's shoulder. “Nothing. Never mind.”

 

 

 

 

 

With a newly painted van and a better idea of what living in a van was like, they set out again more confident than they had been the first time.

 

The Homicides were not the only things that had been changed and renewed during their break. Johnny felt it before they'd finished packing and seemed reluctant to leave at all. Edgar felt it just outside and locked the door to the house that had never had visitors. Tenna and Jimmy felt it together as they stood on the sidewalk waiting for Edgar to bring the van. Devi felt it when they closed the van doors.

 

Tenna looked back at them all as she prepared to back the van out of the driveway. “Everyone okay?”

 

They exchanged glances, shrugs, and a baffled sort of 'knowing', but no one was able to say they were anything but okay. Tenna took a deep breath and backed them out. Jimmy opened the tablet and mentioned the strange feeling in the most mundane way possible for the blog.

 

_'Feels strange to start out again after so much time off! We'll see you out there. Will you see us?'_

 

Outside their windows, the world had definitely shifted. It was subtle at first. Just slightly odd events that made them look twice, but nothing to linger on or stare at. A dog on one street just standing, staring, not responding to anything. Someone in a crowd resembling Pepito. Something falling from a building.

 

As Jimmy and Edgar combed through the newspapers and online articles for places to perform or traces of their old activity, Edgar felt a kernel of worry begin to form in his stomach.

 

“Guys?”

 

Jimmy turned around to look at Edgar, though the others remained focused on their own things. “What's up?”

 

“This is a report of a lady spontaneously combusting. In this normal newspaper.”

 

Johnny sat up straighter. “Does that still happen?”

 

Even Devi was paying attention now. “Did it _ever_?”

 

Edgar shook his head. “I don't know. I'm just TV and Dib Magazines, remember?” He looked at the page, still bewildered that it was real. “It's just so weird to see this next to local news and not a page about orbs or chupacabra.”

 

“Weird,” Johnny said, settling back into his casual lean against Edgar. He replaced his headphones and went back to staring out the window.

 

But the further they got from home, the weirder things became.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I call these 'emotions' chapters, these ones where no one is charging head on into action and plot town, but is instead just running around having feelings at everyone. It's still important stuff for them to do, especially considering what I'm going to throw them into after this point, so we're doing it. And some of it is plot foreshadowing for people who know about things already. 
> 
> Somehow, there is only one song in this chapter, and it's 
> 
> CrusherP - ECHO
> 
> It's on YouTube, it's good shit. I was linked to it when I started this rewrite, and it's been sending me such strong Nny vibes since then. I've been waiting a while to use it. Other than it, I kept this chapter pretty quiet, but for Nny and Edgar having a few lines of VAST's "My TV and You" from the first chapter. I always think of them being strongly linked to that song, particularly now that Edgar is 'The TV One' in this version of the story. I love the idea of that really being the extent of what they give the largest fucks about - the media they enjoy, and each other. It's not healthy, but most of what happens to these kids is, so, eh.
> 
> There's also little things in chapters like these that I enjoy. Stuff about Nny having auditioned other genders before arriving at his current spot, Devi and Tenna and Jimmy laughing about how weird kissing someone with a beard must be, Edgar and Nny coping in ways that work for them but would make psychologists scream, all that stuff. I keep saying it, but I keep wanting to fill their world up so people can see them the way I do. I'm both excited to get to the end, and pulling back from it a little. I don't want to stop having all these adventures with these kids again, haha.
> 
> Edgar ended up needing this break in the action the most, poor guy. His sections ended up just going 'clunk' as I wrote through them and I realized how badly I'd fucked him up, so we spent a little time here at least nudging Edgar back in the right direction so that he's not hopeless for the entire remainder of the story. Good luck, Edgar.
> 
> I think about the relationships between these five like the ones I had my first years in college, where just spending every single day in such close proximity to everyone , who were all going through the same stresses, made the friendships really solid and really emotionally attached in a very short time. We used to call it 'college time', saying every semester was more like a year for how much like a warped family we felt. The Homicides are all that age and have spent every day for years with each other, so I find their intense attachments to each other a totally acceptable extension of their situation. 
> 
> Which is how you'll have to look at pretty much everything they do from this point on.


	24. Self-Guided Downward Spiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny gets many things he wants but not the way he wants them. Blogs, planes, exotic alien locations.

Three hours into the trip to nowhere, they sat in a parking lot with the van doors open eating stolen convenience store food. Jimmy was in the middle of a story from his 'piercing guy', who everyone had silently agreed to say nothing about. For whatever reason, this thrilling tale required a visual aid, and Jimmy had the others clustered around him while he took a pen to a page ripped from the back of one of Johnny's notebooks.

 

“So, then there's this chicken, and it’s like…”

 

Johnny squinted at the drawing. “Are you – that's a _chicken_?”

 

Jimmy pulled the paper away defensively. “Hey, I’m not like you and Devi, okay?”

 

“It's got one leg.”

 

“Fuck you, here.” Jimmy added a triangular shape extending from the underside of the already boomerang-shaped bird.

 

Tenna leaned over his shoulder and ogled the drawing. “Dude, your chicken’s got a kickstand.”

 

“It’s a leg!”

 

“That is a fucking kickstand,” Devi told him.

 

“Hey, are we above stealing from children?” Johnny asked suddenly. “I want to learn to ride a bike.”

 

Tenna raised an eyebrow. “How many years have you been living with Edgar and that basement never once gave you a bike?”

 

“I just thought of it now.”

 

“We're not above stealing from children,” Jimmy said as he tried to fix his chicken. “But if I post about wanting bikes on the blog, I bet we won't even have to steal them.”

 

Johnny laughed and casually leaned back against Edgar, who accommodated the weight and shape of Johnny without a second thought. “You should do that, then. I want to see how far they'll go. Someday, those people are going to get us on a plane.”

 

 

 

The minor masses had missed them. When Jimmy announced they were heading back out into the world, in return he received a flood of messages and requests for specific locations for the Homicides to play. Requests for contact and other strange messages immediately began reappearing on the blog itself. It was easier to pretend they were part of the band's aesthetic than address them in any way, so Jimmy let them stay.

 

He also received a 'Please contact me' for every other message. They alternated in the mail box perfectly. Edgar thought this was good evidence for Dib's theory that the blog was just generating junk between the regular posts, and Jimmy, lately a sucker for anything that sounded like scientific evidence, accepted it.

 

And he would have stayed accepting if not for everything else.

 

The road they wanted to take to the next shady place Tenna had arranged for them to play was full of official people in hazmat suits and riot gear. When the van drew close, a figure in a face-obscuring mask flagged Tenna down and she rolled down her window.

 

“Sorry, you'll have to go around,” the masked man said.

 

“What's going on?”

 

“Just a minor situation with the undead. We've got it contained.”

 

“Oh. Okay then.” She rolled the window most of the way up. “Good luck with that.”

 

Edgar watched the flock of people waving shields and poles at each other as Tenna turned the van around. “I always thought the undead would be a bigger issue,” he said.

 

Johnny looked up from his notebook. “Right? They made it seem like it would be this global disaster and usually it's just kind of mildly inconvenient. Like having a cold. Or construction. It sucks, but it is literally not the end of the world.”

 

Devi tilted her head and stared into the distance. “Huh.”

 

“What's up?” Tenna asked as she led them down a bumpy country side road.

 

“I thought for a second that I had a story about a zombie.”

 

Jimmy didn't even look up from his tablet where he was recalculating their route. “Not anymore?”

 

“It's the fucking weirdest thing. I feel like if I'd just started talking instead of asking myself what the hell I was going to say, I would have said something important.”

 

“Let this be a lesson to you,” Johnny laughed. “Stop thinking before you talk.”

 

She smiled. “I'm already pretty good at that.”

 

The road grew less and less like a road and more just like a space where a vehicle could theoretically fit. Tenna repeated “Jimmy, are you _sure_?” every few minutes as they rumbled through dirt and thick tall grasses.

 

“This is the road! I don't know what else to tell you. Here!” Jimmy thrust the tablet up at Devi. “Look at it.”

 

Devi turned the tablet around in her hands a few times. “It looks like the right road, Ten.”

 

“Tell this Dib dude he needs to update his map thingy, then. This shit was maybe a road when people were using chariots, but it isn't one now.”

 

Just as Tenna was about to say that they had to turn around, the thick brush suddenly cleared. She hit the breaks and they stared out into a field where tall grass had been hacked down in a path.

 

“Okay, what the fuck.”

 

Their radio, which had been playing commercials until that moment launched into deafening static.

 

“Oh, God!” Devi yelled as she clawed at the volume dial. When this didn't change anything, she hit the button to turn it off, but the static continued and shifted, breaking into bits and pieces of audio.

 

“ _\--shining--”_

 

“ _\--ly black--”_

 

“ _\--you hear--”_

 

“ _\--Nny--”_

 

Johnny jumped in his seat. “Oh, shit!” He scrambled to pry his seatbelt off and started climbing over Edgar to get to the van door.

 

“Whoa, whoa, hang on!”

 

“I heard it, it's for me!”

 

He heaved the door open and jumped out into the flattened grass. The wind hissed at him as it shuffled through the uncut grasses and the static continued to pour from the van.

 

“ _I'm gonna run away now and never look back”_

 

“ _\--home--”_

 

Traces of songs sputtered through like several radio stations trying to establish themselves on the same frequency. Johnny pressed his hands over his ears, trying to hear what was in his head and not what was in the air. The grass crunched behind him as the others exited the van.

 

“Guys, this isn't a road,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny looked up and took in the curve of the pattern of the flattened grass. His hands fell slowly from his head as he walked along the path.

 

“It's a circle.”

 

Tenna stood beside the van, her hand still on the driver's side door. “We – we got roadblocked by zombies and ended up in a crop circle.”

 

And there was the _tune_ again. The song, the notes, whatever it was. It pulled Johnny forward, into the grass, away from the others.

 

“ _\--calling--”_

 

He tried to replicate the tune, but it still sounded wrong, felt wrong in his throat.

 

A voice spoke in his head. Clearly. No static, no vague feelings, just words:

 

_Is it too early for you?_

 

“What?”

 

_You can't hear it. That might not be your fault._

 

“Nny!”

 

He startled and whirled around with his fingers wrapped around his necklace. He was standing in the center a big open circle of flattened grass.

 

“Hey,” Jimmy said. “Sorry, I thought you heard me.”

 

Johnny exhaled. “Yeah. What's up?”

 

“I just wanted to see what happened to you. Dib hijacked my tablet and Edgar's neck to get pictures of this, and you're running off yelling about static talking to you and – yeah.”

 

“It just – it was talking to me. Words. It's not usually – Nevermind. I'll go bother Edgar.”

 

“No, no, it's fine! Please, bother me!”

 

“I don't know what it's doing. I don't know what _I'm_ doing. I don't know if those are different things.”

 

“It's okay. We're still doing this.”

 

“I know. I just – we're in a fucking crop circle! This should be awesome! Instead I'm standing around talking to myself and wondering if my brain is trying to kill me. I didn't even have time to think, 'Hey, this is neat!', it was just like, 'Get out of the car, you have an appointment with crazy in this random field.'”

 

“I don't think you're crazy.”

 

“That's you and Edgar, then. And maybe not even him.” He dropped his hands from his neck. “I don't know. Nevermind. Let's just go back.”

 

Jimmy led Johnny back to the others, who were clustered around the tablet in Edgar's hands, listening to Dib.

 

“They can sometimes have frequencies that cut into radio signals, so that could explain what you encountered on the way in,” Dib's voice explained through the tiny speakers.

 

“Oh, Nny's back,” Tenna said.

 

“Are you okay?” Edgar asked.

 

“Great!” Dib exclaimed. “We should take some scans. Someone get him in camera range.”

 

“I really don't feel like doing this, Dib,” Johnny said as he walked by.

 

“Is he experiencing a dramatic shift in emotion? That's a known side effect, you should – ”

 

“That's also just kind of _Nny_ ,” Devi said. “We're done, Dib, we were trying to get somewhere.”

 

There was a squealing protest from the tablet as Edgar switched it off and handed it back to Jimmy. He followed Johnny back to the van.

 

“You sure you're okay?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. Just... you know. I don't have feelings, they just happen to me.”

 

“That again?”

 

“Pfft. That _always_.”

 

Jimmy popped up behind Edgar. “Hey. Uh, I know shit is weird, but before we go, can we do something?”

 

Devi crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, this should be good.”

 

He held up the tablet. “Can we take a picture?”

 

It took some effort, but they managed to get everyone into frame with just enough grass in the back to convince someone else that they might have stopped at a crop circle.

 

 

 

 

 

Before their first performance, Johnny complained of feeling watched. Tenna told him that was normal for visible people, but he insisted this was different. Nerves were high for their first show already with everyone concerned about Johnny's control of his old selves, but the trip had also added a strange layer over the night that no one could quite shake even if they didn't mention it.

 

“So no channeling murder guys this time,” Devi said.

 

“I know, I know. I'm pretty sure I've got it.”

 

“Nny.”

 

“That is literally the best I can do, Devi. You think I can tell them 'You don't get to sing with me' when they can cut my wrists open?”

 

She reached forward and grabbed his arm. She'd never done it that way before. It had always been trying to hurt him or keep him from hurting others, not this urgent need to talk. Johnny flinched and tried to pull away, but Devi wouldn't let go. “We agreed to do this because you were so sure of being able to contain yourself, you can't say it doesn't work now when we're supposed to go on.”

 

“It's like 98 percent. If someone in the audience brings a chihuahua or a spork or something else really random that once upset the other two then it might set one of them off a little. But I got it. I slept and everything. Just don't be upset when the show's not as good.”

 

She released his arm, but looked wary. “I won't be. No one will. You were just fine before you started doing this, and you'll be fine without them.”

 

“'Fine' isn't 'great'.”

 

“The fuck is your damage? Do you _want_ this to keep to happening to you?”

 

“No. Just saying.”

 

Tenna had worked with Johnny and Devi for some new visual ideas and if they performed in a place with the equipment to make it work, they were quick to use it. It had been Johnny's idea at the beginning to cut off lights and microphones to the group one by one on his command at the end of the show. He'd called a symbolic murder. The first time he proposed it, it was a little uncomfortable and mostly impossible. Now it was very possible and especially uncomfortable, but that didn't stop it from happening.

 

Edgar had proved at least competent at alterations, though the assessment of his ability was somewhat skewed by the band's aesthetic, which was an asymmetrical thready mess of glitter and patchwork anyway. Whether an accident of Edgar's lack of skill or not, Johnny had a shirt that fit him again. The bottom of it now flared even more than before which made Johnny even more theatrical and twirly.

 

He stood in front of another audience with panels of sheer blue fabric and glitter fluttering around his hips and knees and sang of blood and poison. He sang of amusement parks with blood painted on his face and he delighted in the combination of all of it.

 

“ _never need a haircut_

_and there's endless company_

_what better time to reinvent yourself_

_than post-mortuary?_

 

_I haven't paid for food in years_

_I buy risks and thrills instead_

_there will never again be cause for tears_

_oh, the perks of being dead”_

 

 

His other selves pulled at him, begging to come out and breathe and make him greater even for one song, but Johnny, with great effort, resisted them. That little string of notes he'd heard in the static itched in his brain, dared him to try singing it here again, but still he backed away from their persistent gravity. He sang through everything they'd planned for the evening.

 

_“Much too weak to jump yourself_   
_Heal the wounds or crack the shell_   
_Lift yourself from once below_

_Praise the anger_   
_bring it on home,_   
_bring it on home_   
_bring it on home,_   
_bring it on home”_

 

He sang through things they decided to play on a whim.

 

_“You leave the venom when you bite_   
_Hunting another prey at night_   
_You're thinking I'm too weak to fight_   
_You don't see I'm the villain”_

  
_“Trigger happy point at me_  
 _Just pathetic weaponry_  
 _I ain't ever gonna change_  
 _Oooooh”_  
  
_“I don't love you, human_  
 _You remind me of the things I hate in me_  
 _I don't love you, human_  
 _Cause you show me how imperfect I can be”_

_“Human...”_

 

 

He sang something that apparently struck a nerve elsewhere.

 

 

“ _I don't think that it's gonna rain again today  
There's a devil at your side but an angel on her way”_

It was a feeling like he had something in his eye and his peripheral vision kept steering him to the the right.

“ _Someone hit the light 'cause there's more here to be seen  
When you caught my eye, I saw everywhere I'd been_

_and wanna go to”_

 

Across the room, he looked for Pepito, for Dib, for something obvious and weird, but in world where everyone is weird, no one is. With the room full of people jumping or cheering and covered in glitter and makeup, nothing stood out. He was still supposed to be performing, but every chance he got, he was drawn to the corner.

 

He was being stared at, he was being watched.

 

“ _You came on your own, that's how you'll leave  
With hope in your hands and air to breathe”_

 

This wasn't 'minor-celebrity singing on stage' stared at. Something else lingered in the intent, something malicious, something expecting, something ready, something he'd felt in televisions, bathroom fans, radio stations, and crop circles.

 

“ _I won't disappoint you as you fall apart  
Some things should be simple; even an end has a start”_

Maybe he shouldn't be singing these words.

He knew this feeling, he knew this watching. Whatever this was had always been watching him. He knew this gaze, this presence. _All_ of him did.

_“I wondered how long it would take for you to recognize it.”_

The words echoed in his head and he dropped the words to the song in shock. In a mild panic, he began coughing to give himself a real excuse for the mishap. _Do I know you?_

“ _Something like that.”_

_I don't know, I –_

_“Aren't you busy right now?”_

Johnny looked up at the people in front of him, the tugging at his eyes gone and some expert lying falling from his lips.

“Fucking bug flew in my mouth,” he told the room. “Deepest apologies. Let's try this again, shall we?”

The audience clapped for him as he gestured back to the band and relief from Edgar and the others rushed in around him. He nodded toward them and they pulled him back into the song.  
  


_“You'll lose everything by the end_   
_Still my broken limbs you find time to mend_

_More and more people I_   
_Know are getting ill_   
_Pull something good from the_   
_Ashes, now be still”_

After the performance and subsequent encore of a random smattering of songs, Johnny settled in with the others in the recycled venue's old conference room turned green room and performer lounge. He downed several cups of water and then felt Devi eyeing him as she tore open a granola bar.

 

“So?” she asked. “How did keeping our murder friends out of it go?”

 

“You saw: I fucked up.”

 

“You said there was a bug.”

 

“Someone was watching me.”

 

“Dude,” Tenna said. “Au-di-ence.”

 

Johnny shoved her in response. “No, not that! It's _active_ watching; it's detailed, focused, close. It's not an audience, it's a stalker. There was a voice, someone tried to talk to me.”

 

“Pepito?” Edgar suggested.

 

“I almost wish. I think I know how to handle him.”

 

Jimmy sat across from Johnny. “There's something to _do_ with this person watching you?”

 

“It feels like there should be. I'm supposed to do something they want. I'd stare back if I knew who they were.”

 

Tenna's legs swung back and forth below the table she was sitting on. “What about aliens?”

 

“Oh, we'd make Dib's day,” Edgar said. He flipped the pendant on his neck between his fingers. “First the circle and then aliens come to our shows? He'd owe us for life if we were being stalked by aliens.”

 

“This presumes we'd stay on the planet,” Devi said. “Aliens are more abductors than stalkers, aren't they?”

 

“I'll make more of an effort to let the aliens know I'm an abnormal sample,” Johnny said. “Or maybe I'll just ask for volunteers and direct the aliens in that direction. People into abductions are probably into us too.”

 

“I wonder if there are normal people watching us,” Tenna said. “Like just doctors and construction workers and shit.”

 

“We could use some doctors who can see us,” Edgar said. He glanced at Jimmy. “Can you skew us toward that demographic?”

 

Jimmy blinked at him. “Ha.”

 

“You guys don't feel it, do you?” Johnny asked.

 

Devi's shoulders sank with the tone of the conversation. “The staring?”

 

“Any of it. Staring, pulling, calling.”

 

She shook her head. “No.”

 

Johnny twirled the key on his neck between his fingers. “You know what? I think I'm done being Evil's Chosen One now.”

 

Jimmy bit his lip in thought and clicked his teeth against his lip ring. “What if we check records of who comes to the shows?”

 

“Dude, we don't keep records,” Tenna said. “We barely keep a calendar.”

 

“No, I mean, what if we compare the lists from the venues?”

 

“If there is one,” Devi said. “Parking lots and street corners aren't keeping track of credit card sales to see us.”

 

He frowned. “I just thought if we could compare the audience every time Nny thought there was some staring wacko in the audience, we might find a name or something, and then we can track them down.”

 

Tenna patted his shoulder. “It's a good idea, we just aren't organized enough for it to be useful.”

 

“And if you wanted to be a proper stalking wacko,” Edgar said, “you'd use cash.”

 

“You know some shit about stalking?” Tenna teased.

 

“TV, remember? I've seen a combined twenty-five years of crime dramas and horror movies. I've got stalking covered.”

 

Johnny twisted the key tighter around his fingers, distant and distracted. “I feel like I'm making something angry.”

 

Tenna took a large step away from Johnny and toward Devi. “Uh.”

 

“What kinda thing?” Devi asked.

 

“I don't know, the thing watching? The static? Pick any one of the supernatural bullshit things that are happening to me. One of them looks at me like I'm its disappointing child.”

 

“Sooo, are we defying it in a blaze of righteous glory, or trying to make it happy again?”

 

“I don't know! I don't know anything, this shit is just happening to me! I don't even get to make the decisions in my own stupid story!”

 

Edgar reached out reassuringly. “Okay, okay. Breathe, okay?”

 

Johnny frowned at him, but took several long breaths.

 

“Does it still feel angry right now?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny closed his eyes and inhaled. “Yes.”

 

“Okay, so, tell me, right now, without thinking, what do you want to do?”

 

When Johnny's eyes opened, he looked around at the others before looking back at Edgar. “Run.”

 

Edgar smiled at him. “Then we run.”

 

 

 

Luckily, running was what they were already doing, they could just make it more interesting. They traveled in strange patterns, backtracking here, not stopping for days there. They didn't know that driving would be enough to keep Johnny's displeased head monster at bay, but it was all they had.

 

Johnny continued to perform without the help of his past lives' authentic experiences, and while he'd been right when he said he wasn't as good without them, that didn't mean he was in any way _bad_. Maybe he was less hypnotic now, maybe fewer people hung on every breath, but for every time that didn't happen, there were ten that it did. Edgar certainly didn't find him less incredible, and he was willing to bet Jimmy hadn't either.

 

Every now and then, maybe every two or three performances, there was a change in Johnny while he sang and his previous flair returned. The audience reacted to it every time, though they probably weren't even really aware of what a shift it was. It was the length of a single song, usually, and then Johnny was back to being just slightly not as good.

 

Devi was suspicious, and though she didn't outright question him, he told her not to worry about it. But when questioned alone with Edgar about whether his prior selves had been involved lately, it was a different story.

 

“I _have_ to, they – ”

 

“Nny, you're fine on your own!”

 

“It's not that! I have to let them out occasionally or they'll shut me down. Unless you want me passing out everywhere, I have to do it this way. When it happens, it's because they're pushing and the alternative is I collapse on the stage and ruin everything or break my arm or something! It's just a little bit, it's – don't look at me like that. I'm not excited about it either.”

 

“They're going to hurt you again.”

 

“Yeah, they are,” Johnny said. “But I think maybe I should be able to choose which hurt I let them inflict.”

 

“You like your wrists cut open more than passing out?! What about the angry thing? And the static? And the black thing?”

 

“The black thing gets closer when I bring them out, but – ”

 

“Nny!”

 

“But it also gets less angry! Everything else calms down! I think we can balance it.”

 

“Listen, I care about you – _enormously_ – but I promised I wouldn't lie for you anymore.”

 

Johnny crossed his arms. “Sticking to your guns here, huh?”

 

“I am. I have to. I'm going to end up hating myself if I just keep going back to that and I can't afford it. So you tell them the truth when they ask, or I will.”

 

“Devi is going to be mad.”

 

“You are not wrong.”

 

“You don't – you don't think I'm justified in this, do you?”

 

“I'm not sure yet. But you'll have me if you need me when you tell them.”

 

Johnny stared at him. “Okay.” He looked at his nails for a moment, picked idly at one. “...You said when they ask.”

 

“I did. But I'm your boyfriend, not your moral compass.”

 

“Okay, okay, I get it.” He held up his hands in a vague gesture of surrender. “Are we okay?”

 

Edgar ran his hand though his hair. “Yeah, we're okay. I get what you're doing, even if I'm not happy about it. You're just – ” He frowned, sighed. “Did you lie to them this much before you met me?”

 

Johnny shrugged and spread his arms wide. “All the time. Like about fucking everything and for no reason. So you've arguably improved me.”

 

Edgar laughed, though the sound of it stuck in his chest somewhere and it only manifested as an amused puff of air. “It's what I'm here for, apparently. Tell me about this black thing, okay? You keep saying it's getting closer. Closer how?”

 

“It's like... It's like the other guys are a beacon. When they're out, it gets a better idea of where I am, but when they're gone, it can't see me.”

 

Edgar put his face in his hands. “And you let that happen again? What are you _doing_?”

 

“I told you! If I don't, they shut me down!”

 

“And what if the black thing finds you? What happens then?!”

 

“I don't know, exactly.”

 

“Nny, you can't keep doing this forever! Don't you get this? They're going to _kill you!”_

 

“Then maybe I'm just deciding how I die!”

 

Edgar gasped and then bit his lip. “Oh.”

 

“I – I don't want to die. It's not like that, okay?”

 

“Isn't it?”

 

“No. Just... if you know you have to, it's nice to have a choice.”

 

Edgar hugged him without warning, and tightly, pressing his face into Johnny's shoulder.

 

“Please don't.”

 

He could have meant 'die' or 'die on purpose' or 'get killed' or even just 'become the others.' It really didn't matter.

 

“I don't want to.”

 

 

 

 

Devi was not, in fact, happy when Johnny reported that he hadn't been able to maintain total freedom and abstention from his other selves, but there was less anger than Johnny had expected. She demanded he show her that it wasn't hurting him and that it wouldn't hurt the others while her song both lashed out in frustration and sank in fear. It was possible no one trusted him, or if they did, it was for the wrong reasons, clouded reasons.

 

Johnny also suspected Edgar's tactic regarding his past lives was just to make lying so inconvenient and uncomfortable on the boyfriend front that Johnny stopped doing it, and it was working, much to Johnny's frustration. He hadn't even needed to be pushed further to tell Devi about the latest happenings.

 

The was less anger from the others than from Devi. They were just nervous about this development, but Johnny insisted letting the people in his head stretch into reality every so often was the best way for him to keep control. If they were in his head, they'd understand, but failing that, he offered the next best thing: a demonstration.

  


The next time he sang, he stayed himself until the start of their last song when he turned and snapped at Devi to get her attention. She looked up in alarm, nearly missing a beat, and he snapped again. He let the others in his head emerge, yielding to their desperate clawing to escape, to invade his head with things he'd never done. He sang – really _performed –_ and was himself, but it was done with overlays of gore and screaming in his head. It was singing with the knowledge that he'd ( _never_ ) killed hundreds of people. With the burning feeling that he needed ( _absolutely no_ ) more blood. The force of the others' memories pushed against him, but couldn't override him completely, no matter how far they went, and this was what he would show Devi.

  


_“Everyone living in ghost town_   
_Everyone buried in waste land_   
_We don't want to_   
_We don't have to be like that_   
_Living in ghost town_   
_All the boys shout it out loud now_   
_All the girls scream it out louder_   
_We don't want to_   
_We don't have to live like that”_

  


All around him, the audience reacted to the stronger performance and screamed at him, for him, about him. They were feverish and a bit depraved – he wanted nothing to do with them, none of him did – but their attention was powerful. He could manipulate them into doing whatever he wished and the ability was only increased with the memories of men who had heard the pleading and begging of the doomed hundreds of times. They clapped when he asked, they swayed if he only gently mimed the motion, they fell silent with only a word and gesture.

  


_“Hold me back you know we're never gonna back down_   
_Hold me back you know we're never gonna back down_   
_We're dead in this ghost town_   
_You better let go so let go of me_   
_We're dead in this ghost town_   
_You better let go so let go let go of me”_

  


The feeling it inspired, whatever it was and whoever was really feeling it, bubbled up inside him, finally bursting from inside him as laughter.

  


_“Oh oh oh oh oh_   
_Oh oh oh oh oh, let go let go of me_   
_Oh oh oh oh oh_   
_Oh oh oh oh oh, let go let go of me”_

  


Static flashed before his eyes, and the black boiled up around him. They pulled closer, seeing him, finding him, clawing toward him. They'd come right to him and surround him if he let it go on too long. Though he still didn't know what that would mean. Would they consume him? Fix him by unifying this mess in his head? Give him a chance to go around and do all this a fourth time? Whatever their plans, a sickening scraping sound of glass, steel and bone rang through in his head, like claws against machinery.

  


There was a song in that somewhere. He never would have found it without the other lives in his skull. Surely this wasn't all bad.

  


_“Everyone living in ghost town_ **  
** Everyone buried in waste land **  
** We don't want to **  
** We don't have to be like that **  
** Living in ghost town **  
** All the boys shout it out loud now **  
** All the girls scream it out louder **  
** We don't want to **  
** We don't have to live like that”

  


Out of the corner of Johnny's eye, behind black stitch makeup and dramatic lighting, Edgar's expression twisted just so. It was subtle and small and no one else would have noticed it. But.

  


_“Hold me back you know we're never gonna back down_   
_Hold me back you know we're never gonna back down_   
_We're dead in this ghost town...”_

  


Enough.

  


He made something of a show of snapping back at Devi, but he enjoyed the show of it and so did everyone watching him, so why not? She looked at him, cautious even as she pounded through the song all around them. Next to him, Edgar faltered on a single note. Again, no one in the audience would have noticed it, and Jimmy and Devi didn't even react, but Johnny felt it betray Edgar's nerves as though he'd stood up and declared his fear under a spotlight.

  


_“...It's nearly over, the last train is near_  
 _And it's leaving behind those tears_  
 _These are the bad lands_  
 _The worst place to fear_  
 _Making place for the ones we left here_  
 _They're calling calling_  
 _To say goodbye_  
  
_We're dead in this ghost town_  
 _You better let go so let go of me_  
 _We're dead in this ghost town_  
 _You better let go so let go let go of me”_

  


Johnny snapped his fingers again, for emphasis not necessity, and asserted himself inside his own skull, pushing the old lifetimes away, pressed them into lying low in his mind like some distant tide. The deaths still lingered, but he remembered them now as though he'd seen them in a dream, and not inside every cell in his body. He opened his eyes and grinned at Devi, starting his bow aimed at her before turning it toward the audience.

  


_See? It's me. I've got it._

  


He finished the show as one person instead of a fusion of himselves.

  


_“Were dead in this ghost town_   
_You better let go so let go of me_   
_Were dead in this ghost town_   
_You better let go so let go let go of me_   
_Oh oh oh oh oh_   
_Oh oh oh oh oh, let go let go of me_   
_Oh oh oh oh oh_   
_Oh oh oh oh oh, let go let go of me”_

  


Devi caught up with him afterward, letting Tenna keep Edgar and Jimmy distracted with some kazoo trick or another.

  


He tried to shrink away from her when she grabbed his shoulder. “What the hell was that?”

  


“Me, in control. Let go.”

  


She released his arm. “How long do you have it?”

  


“What?”

  


“I want to know how long you have control, because I don't think _you_ know. I don't think you have the self-awareness to know when you're too drained to handle it.”

  


He frowned at her. The show had been a success and he'd demonstrated what he thought was impressive command of the situation, and now she was angry at him again. “I thought you'd be pleased.”

  


“Yeah, I'm glad you can deal with your brain bullshit _now_ , but I'm thinking long term here! And I'm sure Edgar is too!”

 

“Edgar? Why –? ”

  


“Because he's the only person whose opinion seems to matter to you!”

 

“No, he isn't.” It might have mattered _more,_ but it wasn't the only one that mattered.

 

“Fucking honestly, it doesn't matter to me, okay? If invoking Edgar is what gets you to pay attention, fine. But just fucking _pay attention_. The _second_ this trading places with serial killers bullshit gets harder than it was tonight, you stop and tell us. Or you tell Edgar and he guilts you into telling us, I don't care which.”

 

“And then what?” Johnny asked. “I just start collapsing left and right while they force memories on me instead of me inviting them?”

 

She slid her hands over her forehead, pulling her eyebrows up a little. “God, maybe, I don't know! Is it still bad? How much more do you think there is?”

 

“Are you kidding? They were both way older than me when they died, and their lives were wall to wall murder and Fruity Pops. It's two lifetimes of memory, even if they were short lives. I could keep remembering things from them for the rest of my own life and still never get it all.”

 

She sighed and shook her head. “Is it getting any easier?”

 

“It's less horrible than it was,” Johnny admitted. “I mean, don't get me wrong, it's ...bad. But I'm starting to get used to it.”

 

“God.” Devi dragged her hands down her face. “God, it's so fucked up that I think that's a good thing.”

 

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

 

She shook her head, took a breath to start a word, thought better of it, and then tried again at least three times. Finally, with her hands resting around her neck, rubbing the base of her skull, she succeeded. “Will you tell me everything you remember about me?”

 

There was a lot of Devi among all the gore. She stuck out as bright spots in and otherwise chaotic mass of blood and bone. He could remember liking her, which was unusual in itself, and then he'd liked her so much that it had manifested outwardly, which was even stranger, but it hadn't gone well. He knew this, she knew this. He had broken glass drawn on his face because of how much they both knew this.

 

“No.”

 

“What?”

 

“I said no.”

 

“Nny, please, just tell me, okay? I just –”

 

“No! I don't want you to know any more of it than you have to. That's part of why we're even fucking – ”

 

“It couldn't _all_ have been attempted murder. What else is there?”

 

There was a bookstore and an overlook and talk about paintings and movies and gossipy bullshit and a couch all before the shattering glass. “You worked in a bookstore. We talked about painting and movies and shit, okay?”

 

“No, not okay. What else?”

 

“Why is this important all of a sudden?”

 

“I want to know what these people you're inviting into your head think about me. I want to have a chance.”

 

“... a chance?”

 

“To run? To fight back? Something?”

 

“Shit, Devi, it's not – ”

 

“Just fucking tell me, okay?”

 

“I – he liked you, okay? He liked you _immensely_.” He ran his fingers back through his hair, setting off a small shower of glitter that fluttered into his eyelashes in the process. “His reactions to feeling that way were strong and,” he swallowed, “badly calibrated. But the inclination was there. We would have kissed instead of … _everything_ that happened if I just hadn't been broken, been _crazy._ ”

 

“So it used to be me? And not Edgar?”

 

“At least that time, yeah. So he won't hurt you, okay?”

 

“But he tried to before, while 'liking me immensely.'”

 

“He wouldn't now, the moment was ruined.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You have to just trust me on that, okay? I can know it's fucked up and understand it at the same time. You just have to trust me.”

 

She shook her head helplessly. “Okay. I mean, I'm not really sure I do, but okay.”

 

It was strange knowing those memories were there. Stranger not knowing whether a memory of a feeling was the same as having the feeling. He could remember thinking Devi was great, liking her, finding her beautiful, wanting her around, feeling happy that she just existed near him, really considering kissing her and not being repelled by the idea. He could also remember all of that inspiring a desperate need to preserve it, and his old solution for preservation being eradication.

 

All of it had just been painted over with Edgar at some point.

 

“Do you know why it didn't work out that way this time?” Devi asked. “Why we didn't try again minus the murder?”

 

“Do _you_?”

 

“No.” She looked at her hands as though they held some clue. “I mean, you're an asshole, I'm always saying that, but we all are. If there's a backup asshole in this group, it's me. I should be cool with that.”

 

Johnny laughed, despite growing discomfort with the turn the conversation had taken.

 

“Good,” Devi said, “I also find being a horrible person to be humorous.”

 

“You all stuck around for me this long for some reason. I must have been amusing.”

 

She shoved him, which wasn't the worst contact ever, though he still preferred 'none'. “We didn't have a choice.” He was about to make a joke and then Devi sighed and the teasing fun left her voice all at once. “And now... I feel like I have an obvious choice, and I'm not sure why I can't make it.”

 

“Are we... talking about Tenna? Are you sure you don't want to talk to Edgar about this kind of stuff?”

 

Abruptly, she looked straight into his face, eyes wide. “Edgar.”

 

“What?”

 

“You said he was made for you. You said he was fake.” She pulled her hair out of pigtails, still staring right through Johnny. “It could have been us if he – This could have worked eventually. But then Edgar.”

 

Johnny took a step back. “What are you saying, exactly?”

 

“And Jimmy and Tenna,” she said as her gaze drifted to the floor. “They make so much _sense_ , they – ” She snapped her hair tie around her wrist and looked back into Johnny's eyes. “Jesus, Nny, I'm sorry. I don't know where any of that came from.”

 

“It was literally more comfortable to kiss you than listen to that.”

 

She bit her lip and closed her eyes. “Yes. Sorry. Forget it, okay?”

 

“I'll try? You'll recall I have a problem with doing too much of the opposite.”

 

Heavy footsteps fell into the room behind Devi and in came Edgar, chased by Jimmy, who was carrying Tenna on his shoulders.

 

“Get back here so I can hit you!”

 

“What kind of motivation is that?!”

 

Edgar scuttled away from the combined tower of Jimmy and Tenna, the loose strings from his stitch costume fluttering around him. Tenna took a swipe at him, which missed. He stopped short when he saw Johnny, which sent Jimmy and Tenna crashing into him, swinging Tenna toward the floor as Jimmy tried to get his balance.

 

Edgar inclined his head, almost totally ignoring the precarious tower of Tenna leaning over him. “Are you okay?”

 

Johnny nodded. “Oh, yeah. Perfectly fine.”

 

“Edgar? Edgar, Edgar, dude!” Tenna flailed at Edgar's shoulders and he caught her arms so she formed a bridge between him and Jimmy.

 

Edgar glanced at Devi, then back to Johnny, but said nothing else as he helped Tenna off of Jimmy's back. Tenna ruffled Jimmy's hair and high-fived him. “Well done, team. We got him.”

 

Edgar laughed. “You did not 'get' me, you fell into me!”

 

“Pfft, you wish. It was part of our grand plan,” Jimmy said. He took Tenna's hand and pulled her arm into the air with his. “Together, we're invincible!”

 

Devi shrugged. “See?”

 

“She does the same shit with you,” Johnny said.

 

Devi narrowed her eyes. “Does she?”

 

Edgar left Jimmy and Tenna to their congratulatory yelling and approached Johnny with a cautious smile. “You sure you're okay? I didn't know how things were going at the end there.”

 

Johnny spread his arms and bowed slightly. “I'm intact. I'm fine. Devi asked for proof that I could control my head, I demonstrated.”

 

“It looked amazing, whatever it was. It was just scary.”

 

“You're in a band called 'The Homicides,' Edgar, you might want to reconcile with 'scary.'”

 

“Not that kind of scary.”

 

As Johnny smiled at Edgar, he spotted Devi with her lip caught in her teeth as she watched Jimmy twirl Tenna around to some song they were making up on the spot.

 

_How weird is this all going to get?_

 

“I'm looking for a 'Tenna',” a strange voice announced. When they turned toward the sound, there was a woman with a briefcase, a high pony tail, and a formal black suit standing in the doorway. Her dark glasses completely obscured her eyes.

 

“Uh, hi?” Tenna said, as Jimmy set her on the ground. “That's me.”

 

It was still surreal to hear someone beyond their group using their names, no matter how many times it had happened. “Good to meet you,” the woman said. “Good to _see_ all of you.”

 

Johnny narrowed his eyes at her and barely nodded in acknowledgment. Jimmy slid over to join the safety of the others. There was no telling what visible people would do, after all. They had a habit of attempting hugs and kisses with little warning.

 

The woman approached Tenna with a business card, which Tenna took as though she thought it might be booby trapped. She titled her head when she read the card.

 

“'Mysterious Mysteries?'” She looked up at Edgar. “Isn't that the show you watch?”

 

“I've … been known to leave it on.”

 

“I'm Elize, I do research and writing for the show. We're been hearing about you kids.”

 

“We aren't kids,” Johnny growled.

 

“Apologies,” she said, pushing her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. “But you have been making some waves with our viewer base. When we received the latest emails from 'Agent Mothman', we assumed it to be his usual nonsense, but we've discovered some independent research that seems to confirm his claims of a group of teenagers spontaneously becoming visible when they play music. I came to confirm for myself.”

 

Jimmy leaned close to Johnny and whispered. “See? _Science._ ”

 

“Fuck off, we aren't science and neither is she.”

 

Tenna took a step toward her. “So... you want an interview or something? I don't know if we have time tonight.”

 

“Oh, an interview, yes,” she said, “but one on the show.”

 

Devi startled. “On the _show_?”

 

“We're hoping to record what you do. Our viewers are particularly interested in phenomenon like you, and to catch it on video would be a significant segment for us. We have several ides of how to proceed, if you're interested. We are, of course, willing to pay.”

 

“Where do you need to film this?” Johnny asked.

 

“Well, we would like to make sure it's a controlled environment...”

 

He crossed his arms. “Maybe one we can only reach by _plane_?”

 

“The idea had been considered. I'll have to make some calls, but we could schedule that for a few weeks from now if you'll sign some paperwork.”

 

Johnny laughed. “Perfect.”

 

 

 

 

 

Later that evening, Edgar, Johnny, and Jimmy settled into their shared hotel room. It was late, they were tired but not _tired_ , and mostly enjoying the silence.

 

“This is good,” Johnny said. He was flat on his stomach and taking up as much of one of the two beds in the room as possible.

 

Edgar sat on the floor near the foot of the bed. “Yeah. I never realize how much my head hurts until we get into a situation where it stops being made worse.”

 

Next to Edgar, Jimmy had his eyes closed, head tilted back against the bed, legs stretched out in front of him. He hummed contentedly and then his tablet erupted in some shrill jangling noise, sending his arms flailing in all directions. Edgar narrowly missed getting a black eye.

 

Dib's face flickered onto the screen as Jimmy flung the tablet to the floor in front of him in surprise.

 

“What are you _doing_?” Dib asked.

 

Edgar leaned over the tablet. “What are _you_ doing?”

 

“Oh, good, just the guy I wanted to see.”

 

Edgar's mouth twisted into an uncomfortable smile. “What now?”

 

“I just reviewed the download from your camera while you were at Pepito's house.”

 

“Oh.” Edgar picked up the tablet and rested it on his knee. “I sorta forgot about that.”

 

“I noticed. You should have sent it to me the day you recorded it. Now we don't know what has changed.”

 

Johnny reclined against a wall of pillows to get a better view of the tablet. “Something's changed? Did he move back in?”

 

“Well, it's more that he moved out even more, actually”

 

Jimmy slid closer to Edgar. “What do you mean?”

 

“Here, I'll patch you into the feed. Take a look at this.”

 

The image flickered and shook a few times, and then the screen filled with the image of an empty lot. The camera scanned to the left, showing the school and Dib standing outside on the sidewalk holding a tablet of his own.

 

Johnny abandoned his pillows and slid along the bed to hang over Edgar and Jimmy. “Holy fuck. Have you tried walking over there?”

 

“We're working on it.”

 

“Move legs, cross the fucking street. It's not a hard concept.”

 

“We don't want to disrupt anything. You should _see_ the readings we're getting on this.”

 

Edgar elbowed Jimmy. “Can you go get Devi and Tenna? I want them to see this too.”

 

“On it.” Jimmy sprang to his feet and headed out into the hall.

 

“What are the readings showing?” Johnny asked. “There's extra spooky asshole vibes coming from the place or what?”

 

“Less, actually. The readings in that lot now compared to what we were getting daily when the house was there are night and day. I was hoping you two had felt something while you were there. You were the last people to visit the site while the house was still visible.”

 

“Visible?” Edgar said. “You mean it's still there?”

 

“Well, we're not sure it ever was,” Dib said. They could see him shrug on the camera feed in front of Pepito's empty lot. “You know how that goes. But something was going on there while the house was there. There was so much more energy. _Something_ was happening there and we have a feeling that the house was just a facade for whatever might _still_ be there. The energy readings we've had all this time may have been caused by them just keeping up appearances. You know, projecting the house.”

 

“You'd already told us about that,” Johnny said. “We were freaked out that we were stepping on nothing the next time we went there.”

 

“Right, but now we have another kind of confirmation that that could be the case.”

 

“So what _were_ we stepping on?”

 

“He may have access to a technology that creates tangible holograms.”

 

“That sounds like straight up fucking magic.”

 

Dib's flinch was visible even from the far away camera. “I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.”

 

Devi nudged their door open, followed by Jimmy and Tenna. “What the hell's going on in here?”

 

Edgar waved her to the floor. “Here, come look.”

 

Devi sat down next to him and Tenna leaned over her lap to look too. “That's a bunch of grass,” Tenna said.

 

“It's _Satan_ grass,” Johnny corrected. “This is where Pepito's house was.”

 

“Anyway,” Dib continued, “your camera caught some readings from Johnny as well as the house when you were there. I really wish you'd shown me this before you left, we could have scanned him.”

 

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “ _So_ sad.”

 

“As it is now, we just have the peripheral scans you took, so the readings could be incomplete, but things definitely took a spike when he said his name and the key reacted.”

 

Johnny sniffed. “You needed _readings_ to know that some energy was released when my head slammed into the door? You need to back up from the screen occasionally, Dib, you're gonna hurt yourself.”

 

“It reacted differently to you than to any other stimulus,” Dib said. “Or maybe just the key. But either way, you could be what we need to check on what is happening there _now_.”

 

“A little late, as much as I'd love to wander around an empty lot yelling my own name.”

 

Dib ignored Johnny's sarcasm and continued with this task at hand. “I'm going to upload some changes to your camera, Edgar. We've developed what we think will be a successful auto-detect system that will activate the camera when conditions matching the ones here are within range.”

 

Johnny jostled Edgar's shoulder in mock excitement. “Can you believe it?! We're going to get footage every time you walk into an empty lot!”

 

Edgar shook his head. “So I don't have to turn it on every time I think something weird might happen?”

 

“No, you should still do that. It doesn't have infinite sensor range, and we're only making guesses at the system of measurement it _is_ using. But now you have a better chance of catching things that you don't even know are weird, and we'll have some things to analyze.”

 

Devi dropped her chin into her hands. “This shit is unbelievably fucking weird. Can't we just deal with a single fucked up thing at a time?”

 

“That's why I'm choosing just to not deal with this one,” Johnny said.

 

“I'll keep an eye on it,” Edgar told Dib.

 

 

 

Dib would not respond to them later when the blog began acting up again. Though the phrase Tenna used was 'rebelling against its creator'. There seemed a malicious veneer on everything the blog posted without them, one that was directed toward them instead of the fanbase.

 

“Nny, you should get in contact.” “Nny, don't you remember me?” “It's not nice to ignore people.” “Contact.” Variations on each of these flooded the inbox and the blog itself. The messages kept coming, drowning out everything that wasn't calling for Johnny. Jimmy tried to give the impression that nothing was wrong at all on the blog itself, but the messages made it harder and harder for him to even access the account.

 

One day, access didn't matter. They found the blog filling up with posts none of them had written, all calling for Johnny.

 

The messages grew increasingly more frequent and even a call to Dib couldn't solve it. As far as he could tell the posts weren't there. They didn't exist in the website's code or the host server. He couldn't delete the posts or find their source because there was nothing to delete or track.

 

“Maybe you should answer them,” Jimmy said one day.

 

“How do you suggest I do that? It tells me 'get in contact', and to remember them, but I don't know who it is!”

 

“We're sure this isn't that Pepito dude?” Tenna asked.

 

Edgar shook his head. “I don't think we can ever be sure with Pepito. But he hasn't talked to us in ages.”

 

Johnny frowned and rubbed his arms, practically hugging himself. “Or he's talked to us a hundred times and wiped it all.”

 

The others smiled nervously as Jimmy's tablet displayed a brand new ghost entry. They sat in silence, watching the blog, waiting.

 

Finally, Johnny snatched the tablet from the floor and angrily typed out a post: “ _What do you want?_ ”

 

He posted it to the blog and tossed the tablet across the floor where it slid and spun, crashing into Jimmy's knee. Jimmy watched it carefully in silence.

 

“I wonder if they'll stop,” Jimmy said.

 

Devi leaned over Jimmy's lap. “Is it going to answer him?”

 

They watched the tablet in silence, with Tenna holding her breath and Jimmy biting down hard on his lip ring. The blog refreshed and a new post appeared:

 

_“I've been telling you all along. To come home.”_

 

Johnny's eyes went wide and he sank into himself, sliding away from Jimmy and the tablet and bringing his knees to his chest. Edgar reached out to hold on to him, though Johnny didn't seem to notice.

 

“It's _her_ ,” he whispered.

 

Edgar let his arm settle across Johnny's shoulders. “The static song?”

 

Johnny nodded while the others' expressions slowly revealed dawning horror.

 

Devi swallowed and looked between Johnny and the tablet. “The--,” she swallowed again, coughed. “The voice in your head is _blogging_?”

 

He nodded, backing into Edgar's arm and his breath ragged.

 

“Um,” Tenna whispered. “What do we do?”

 

“Is this a real person?” Edgar asked.

 

Devi held her fingers over her mouth. “I thought it was in his head. I mean, at first I thought he was making it up, but after... Oh my god.”

 

Jimmy picked up the tablet and stared into it, shaking his head. “Could we actually know her?”

 

“Maybe it's Dib,” Tenna said. “That kid has alien shit, right? Isn't that thing Edgar has aliens?”

 

Johnny pressed himself against Edgar and shook his head. “It's not Dib. I can _hear, I can feel_ that it's not Dib. Even if I couldn't, Dib hates hoaxes; he'd never _be_ one.”

 

Tenna bit her lip. “So is it aliens?”

 

Jimmy hit her knee. “Why the fuck would _aliens_ be after Nny?”

 

“Why would _anyone_?” Devi said. “Who else knows him?”

 

Edgar swallowed, tried to speak calmly. “No one else knows _our_ Nny, but it might not be _our_ Nny she wants.”

 

“Someone he killed?” Jimmy pulled the tablet close to his chest.

 

Tenna looked around at the others. “Someone else like us?”

 

Johnny tensed under Edgar's arm. The room felt open, exposed. Every part of Edgar screamed to get in the van and _run_.

 

Devi sat back and glanced around the room. “What's in here that we can use to make Nny hear her?”

 

“Excuse me?!” Johnny demanded.

 

“Have you tried talking to her when she talks to you?”

 

“Fucking no, I haven't tried talking to the voices in my head! That has not gone well for me in the past!”

 

“We're all here, you can do it with us,” Devi said.

 

“No,” Johnny snapped.

 

“You'd rather do it alone?”

 

“No, I'd rather people not just make decisions about what will happen to my head!”

 

Edgar put his other arm around Johnny. “Okay, okay, enough. Just drop it, Devi.”

 

“It's a good idea,” she said. “What else do you suggest we do with this apparently real person who can talk to Nny through static and broken heaters? Just sit back and hope she's content blogging?”

 

“It's not _our_ decision to make,” Edgar told her. “It's Nny's.”

 

Across from Edgar, Jimmy shared the tablet with Tenna, who shook her head as he scrolled. “What does she _want_ though?” Tenna asked. “I mean, she says to go _home,_ but what does that mean?”

 

“She keeps telling _me_ to do that, too,” Johnny said.

 

“So why don't we do that?”

 

“She said it when I was at home too. Whatever home is to her, it's not the same place to me.”

 

Jimmy looked up from the tablet. “Where did you live before? Where did the other Nnys live?”

 

Johnny opened his mouth and then stopped. Slowly, he shook his head. “I don't know. I can see it, if I let them in. When they're with me I – I know the others know the layout of everything, but I don't know where it is or what it's called.”

 

“So we have to go there,” Devi said.

 

“Or that's where we need to make sure we never, ever go,” Tenna said. She shrugged and added, “Either one.”

 

“We don't know what she wants to do after she gets 'home,'” Edgar said. “If she's someone an old Nny killed, then... she's probably kind of angry.”

 

“Probably kind of!” Tenna laughed. “Yeah, maybe!”

 

“Why can she do this to me, then?” Johnny asked. “Why can she talk to my head and none of you can? If she's the same as us, why is she special?”

 

Jimmy looked sadly back into the tablet and then held it out to Johnny. “Do you want to try this again?”

 

Johnny accepted it slowly. Edgar looked over his shoulder at the screen, still showing the latest message saying the static person wanted to come home. “I can't believe I'm fucking doing this,” Johnny said, and typed out, ' _To do what_?'

 

The blog generated a few messages from fans asking what was going on while they waited for a response. Johnny ignored them all and stared at the screen as though willing a reply to appear.

 

Finally, the page updated and a new post appeared. “ _There's nothing else,”_ it said. _“We're coming home.”_

 

Johnny dropped the tablet into his lap. “Great, I feel so much better about this now.”

 

Devi crawled over to grab the tablet and looked at the response. “Shit,” she said, passing it to Tenna.

 

“Maybe we can avoid her,” Tenna said. “Not stay in one place too long, that sort of shit.”

 

Johnny threw his arms up in irritation. “What the fuck do you think we're already doing?!”

 

“Then we go home again?” she tried.

 

“With Pepito's bullshit,” Johnny said as he slowly rubbed the scar on his wrist. “There is nothing I can fucking do.”

 

“Don't,” Edgar said softly. “Stay. We'll figure it out.”

 

Johnny hastily buried his wrist in his sleeve and leaned all his weight against Edgar. “Sure.”

 

They didn't know how they'd know if they met her or where she might be. They didn't know what she'd do, or how they could stop her. No matter how many questions they posed on the blog, whoever was on the other end offered nothing more than a declaration of coming home. Jimmy decided it was no longer worth it to talk to her that way and, for a while, the untraceable messages stopped.

 

What did not stop was the attacks on Johnny.

 

He sang as often as possible as he promised he would – without the assistance of his other selves – but something wasn't happy with this arrangement. Occasionally, he'd miss a cue in a song, agonized expression on his face. Other times it was less painful and just more unsettling. He'd leave a show exhausted, talking of how hard he'd worked to keep his other selves at bay before collapsing in a heap against Edgar.

 

The others watched it happen in the middle of a song about halfway through a show. Johnny gave everything he had to what he was doing, he talked to the audience, he teased his friends, and he sang hard enough that his effort was audible in his breathing between songs. Mid-way through this song, however, he looked over the crowd during an instrumental section, winced behind a smile, opened his eyes, and was someone else. There was no strain, no shortness of breath, nothing but an effortless captivating persona covered in blood and glitter.

 

Edgar tried to find a single second to switch Dib's necklace camera on, but he had to be so quick he wasn't sure if he'd flipped the switch. He hoped it came on by itself.

 

The rest of the performance was the same, maybe better if Edgar tried to be objective, and the audience would certainly not have noticed or complained, but the Homicides felt the shift immediately and deeply. Devi's drumming became angry and loose while Jimmy's guitar lost a bit of 'oomph.' Edgar had no idea how his keyboarding suffered; he hardly noticed it was there.

 

When the song ended, Johnny laughed into the microphone and sent ripples of delight through the room. He looked back at Edgar and the delight faded just enough for Edgar to notice it.

 

Johnny mouthed, “I'm fine,” and pressed his hand to his chest in a gesture of sincerity, but it didn't provide the intended comfort. Was Edgar's Johnny fine, or was it someone else?

 

Impatient to finish the show, they chained their remaining songs together quickly, denying Johnny the time between songs he often used to tease reactions from their audience. After the last song they no longer had the heart to play, Johnny bowed and made a quick exit with Edgar right on his heels.

 

The audience's cheers and calls for them to come back were muffled by the walls and curtains that separated them, surrounding them in the vibration of overstimulated people.

 

Johnny stumbled down the back stairs and was caught before he hit the floor at the bottom. Edgar tightened his arms around Johnny and lowered them both slowly to the glitter-covered wooden floor.

 

“Nny? Are you okay?”

 

Johnny gripped Edgar's arm hard, digging his fingers into flesh, smashing some of Tenna's handiwork.

 

“Ah, ah, stop, stop, stop! Johnny, it's _me!_ Come on, it's Edgar!”

 

Johnny gasped as though surfacing from underwater, released his grip, and began panting. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

 

“Shit, is it you?”

 

“It's me, it's me,” Johnny gasped. “It's always me, that was just... slightly _less_ me. A _lot_ less me. I couldn't get away from him soon enough. Wow.” He turned and looked at Edgar's arms and shoulders. “Are you okay? He didn't do anything?”

 

“I'm fine. What the hell happened? We told you not to --”

 

“It wasn't me.”

 

“I know, that's what we --”

 

“No, I mean, it wasn't me. It wasn't my choice to do it.”

 

The others thundered down the narrow staircase behind them, the footsteps booming with the audience beyond the walls.

 

“The fuck happened?!” Devi yelled.

 

“It was the static lady, she just... pulled them out of me,” Johnny said. “She's out there. She came to the show, she's come to them before, she doesn't _like it_ when I don't use the others, she's fucking _watching us._ ” He took several gasps of air and looked up at the others. “Everything has been her. We were right. She's angry.”

 

Jimmy immediately spun around and charged back up the stairs.

 

Tenna yelled after him, “Jimmy, what are you _doing_? You think you're gonna recognize her? Get back down here!,” but Devi held her back.

 

“Just let him go.”

 

“What if she does something to him?”

 

Devi nodded toward Johnny. “I don't think she's looking for anyone else.”

 

The sound of the audience surged presumably as Jimmy reached the stage. Jimmy's voice came over the microphone as he made up an excuse to be there. “To whoever lost their mind this evening, you can collect it at guest services on your way out...”

 

Johnny shook his head and tried to push himself to his feet using Edgar as a brace. “I couldn't – I couldn't fight it off.”

 

Edgar kept a hold on him as he got shakily to his feet. “What happened?”

 

“I was just there and then I could feel this horrible _thing_ in my head, like it was boiling, like it was _black,_ like it was coming closer, like if I didn't do something it was going to take over. I could feel the shape of it, hear the fucking sounds it was making. And then it just pulled me down through the other two. Like wet tissue paper, just,” he made a diving motion with his hand, “right on through. And then it just buried me.”

 

Reluctant to let Johnny go entirely, Edgar reached for him as he shifted his weight, ready to catch him if he fell again. “It took you to the first guy?”

 

Johnny nodded quickly. “Yeah. I don't – I really don't like using that one, but it – she? – something forced me. The other one knew you and liked you, but this guy... I don't know if you'll always work to get me out of him, he's just a stream of random shit.”

 

“And what happened to the black boiling thing?” Devi asked.

 

Johnny rubbed his wrist and gazed somewhere far beyond her. “He could handle it. He dealt with it like it was just another thing, another day. It was nothing to him. He makes it comes closer, but he's not even afraid of it.”

 

Edgar tried to catch his eye. “Where is it now?”

 

“Gone. I don't know. I don't feel it anymore.”

 

Tenna hovered near Devi, occasionally biting her lip. “What do we do?”

 

Devi cast a quick glance at Tenna and turned back to Johnny. “Did she talk to you up there? Was the black thing related to her?”

 

“I don't know,” Johnny said. His voice cracked a little and the sound twisted in Edgar's chest. “I don't know, I don't know anything. Probably? Yes? I don't know, it was quick and she was just _there_.”

 

“How did you know it was her? What were you doing right before it happened?”

 

He looked at her, tears in the corners of his eyes. “Singing?”

 

“You weren't,” Edgar said. “It was just us when you switched over.”

 

“Oh.” Johnny held his arms like he was cold or afraid; his usual sign that he would very much welcome touch. Edgar put a hand on his back hoping to be reassuring. “I didn't remember, I – then I was... just looking at people, I guess?”

 

“Okay, so maybe you saw her,” Devi said. “Can you remember any faces?”

 

Johnny shook his head. “Just lights. Fog. Hands. Phones.”

 

Devi frowned, but it was sympathetic. “It's okay.” She glanced at Tenna and then turned to head back up the stairs. “I'm going to go get Jimmy.”

 

“What now?” Tenna asked softly.

 

Edgar shrugged. No matter what happened to Johnny, he'd never be able to stop or fix any of it. Things just happened and he was dragged along behind it, promising things would be okay with no way to make it that way. “I don't know.”

 

Devi came back downstairs with Jimmy behind her. He shook his head when the others looked at him expectantly. “I didn't see anything,” he said. “I didn't know what I was looking for, I just thought if she was out there, she'd be like, mouthing evil spells at the stage or something.”

 

Tenna nodded. “Grinning ominously from the back wall, lit from below.”

 

“Yeah.” He tilted his head and leaned closer to Johnny. “You okay?”

 

Johnny nodded but wouldn't make eye-contact.

 

Jimmy bit his lip and straightened his back. “Soooo, what now?”

 

“At this moment, I think we just find somewhere to sleep,” Edgar said.

 

“I meant about shows, and this weird lady and everything,” Jimmy said.

 

Edgar glanced at Johnny. “I know, but I don't think we can all think that far ahead right now.”

 

“Do you want to go back out there?” Jimmy asked Johnny. “Maybe you'll recognize her if she's still watching.”

 

“And do what?” Johnny said. “Yell 'Come and get me!'?”

 

“Maybe we can fight her or something,” Jimmy said.

 

Devi elbowed him. “With what? The power of love and music or something? This isn't a fucking cartoon, Jimmy!”

 

“Nny's got a knife,” Jimmy said softly.

 

She crossed her arms and her song began to spike. “So we have Nny stab someone in a room full of people who can see us. That's your plan, huh?”

 

“I don't know! Maybe she's not human!”

 

“I'm not stabbing anyone,” Johnny said bitterly. “Not unless they try for me first.”

 

Tenna leaned forward. Her song was soft and unsure, its usual carefree and vibrant notes shaking and misplaced. “She has, though. It's just inside your head.”

 

Johnny's lip quivered which flipped some sort of extra protective switch inside of Edgar. “Guys, we're done. Let's just go find a motel and figure this out in the morning.”

 

 

 

 

“What if we just stay in here?” Johnny asked when they'd piled all the people and equipment back into the van.

 

Devi turned around in her seat. “You want to sleep in the van?”

 

He pressed himself harder against Edgar, who already had arms around him. “No fans in here. Heaters, fridges...”

 

“No heat?” Jimmy said with a tinge of panic.

 

“Do you want to stay in here while the rest of us find a motel?” Tenna asked.

 

Johnny closed his eyes. “No.”

 

Edgar hugged him tighter for moment. “I'll stay with you, where ever you want to stay.”

 

“I'm gonna find us a place,” Tenna said. “You can decide in the parking lot if you want.”

 

The streets raced by the windows as Tenna steered them away from the strangely residential area they'd been playing in. Every person on the sidewalks, every car, even every _animal_ could have been Johnny's static woman.

 

He didn't remember anyone from their past who could be like this, certainly no woman who would be angrier than any other person who lost their life at one of Johnny's whims. Edgar and Johnny had had no significant interactions beyond each other the second time around, so as far as Johnny knew they'd never met her. Which might mean that there was a reason the woman took Johnny back to channeling the first one.

 

Tenna eased them into a the lot in front of a motel in the space of fifteen minutes, turned off the van, and waited. No one spoke for several seconds that felt like minutes.

 

“Let's just go in,” Johnny said miserably.

 

 

 

Tenna got them the usual two rooms, though there was no discussion of who would adopt Jimmy for night. He followed Devi and Tenna into their room, the three of them got changed, and they immediately reported to Edgar and Johnny's room just to sit with the new state of things.

 

Edgar and Johnny sat on the floor between the beds.

 

“Hey, we're here,” Tenna said gently.

 

“We're okay,” Edgar said. “Come on.”

 

“We should figure out as much as we can,” Devi said as she dropped to the carpet. “Can we try to channel them in here? We should talk to this woman or at least try to get a better idea of what's happening.”

 

Johnny swallowed. “Yeah, fine.”

 

Edgar leaned away from him a little. “Are you sure?”

 

“I'm okay. Maybe better to do it now.”

 

“You were so against it before.”

 

“And that was before. Let's just do it.”

 

Tenna grinned and gave Johnny some supportive thumbs up. “Yay?”

 

“Okay,” Devi began. “Let's start basic. Can you separate them? Can you choose which one you use?”

 

“Usually?”

 

“Can we try both of them here, then? Should be safer than on stage since we have Edgar right here and not ten feet away with a keyboard between you.”

 

Johnny blinked and glanced at Edgar. “Like a fucking fire extinguisher.”

 

“We just want to figure out what we're up against,” Devi said. “The more we know about the limits of this, the more we can try to counter it.”

 

Johnny folded his arms in front of him, gripping his shirt at his elbows. “I think it makes up limits as it goes along, but okay.”

 

Devi took out her sketchbook, flipped to an empty page, and began to draw a chart. “Okay, so. What makes them show up? There's triggers, and you can do it yourself, right?”

 

“Yeah, yeah. Um, I don't – what kind of information do you want?”

 

“Well, it's almost always when you're singing, right?”

 

“Yeah. But also when I'm just stuck in a place with white noise.”

 

“What's easier to get out of?”

 

“The white noise ones. The singing ones just... it's like a feedback loop or something, I just spiral down and it feeds off my own energy to do it or something. I get stuck in those ones.”

 

“Okay, so we're gonna try to induce the white noise version.” She happily scribbled something down on the page.

 

He stared at her while she made notes. Her demeanor was both weird for this situation and just weird for Devi. She noticed the staring and looked up from her book.

 

“What?”

 

They were _all_ staring at her.

 

“You're just so... _in_ to this,” Tenna said. “It's weird.”

 

Devi leaned back defensively with her sketchbook. “I thought I'd try to lighten the mood, jeez. Thought it would make the whole process a little easier on everyone. Maybe if he isn't already in doom mode he'll come out easier, that sort of shit.”

 

“It's unsettling coming from you,” Johnny told her.

 

Jimmy gave her a sappy look he usually reserved for Johnny. “I think it's _great._ ”

 

Devi thrust her sketchbook into Tenna's arms. “Here, then have Ten do it!”

 

Tenna blinked between Devi and Johnny. “Uh.”

 

“It's fine, Devi,” Johnny said. “But just act normal; you're freaking me out.”

 

She took the book back. “Okay. Jimmy, can you find us a dead radio station?”

 

He hesitated, looking between Johnny and Devi for some kind of signal, and then picked himself up off the floor. “Yeah, okay. Just a minute.”

 

Johnny stared into the carpet, waiting to hear things that weren't there.

 

Devi tapped her sketchbook and Johnny looked up at her. “So just try for the most recent one, okay?”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

“Found one,” Jimmy called from the nightstand. “Are we ready?”

 

Johnny glanced at Edgar, who shrugged nervously.

 

“Yeah, I'm ready,” Johnny said. “Turn it up.”

 

“Okay, now remember that you need to try to remember as much of what you feel while this happens as you can. Voices or songs or whatever. And try to talk to her.”

 

“Yeah, okay, but this is not exploration for more than thirty seconds. After that, it's leaving myself open to invasion and just experiencing the fallout.”

 

“Good luck, dude,” Tenna said, offering thumbs up again.

 

The static from the radio filled the room and for several seconds, Johnny felt nothing except ridiculous. But if he focused in on the patterns in the carpet and forgot the others in the room...

 

“ _why can't I see_

_why can't I see_

_all the colors that you see?”_

 

The static didn't want to settle for the most recent ex-Johnny. It was determined to get him further down. Johnny resisted it, forced himself to see just the last Johnny, just the one who'd known Edgar, the one who'd had enough of an impact on Edgar to start all this.

 

Off in the distance, somewhere, either in his head or out in the world or both, the black raised its 'head', sensed him, recognized him, surged toward him. He tried to see it, understand it, but in order to see more of it, he had to give up more of himself. If he gave up too much of himself, he retained nothing that the others learned or experienced. Maybe the first Johnny knew everything about the black, but current Johnny would never learn it from him. To go that far …

 

“ _I wonder what you're doing. It's not going to work this way.”_

 

He didn't want to go that far. Edgar didn't want him to go that far. Edgar may have been speaking out of self preservation, but he also spoke wisely on the topic. They'd been working on it, talking through it. Edgar was a strange thing to keep around, but if he didn't think too hard about why he was doing it, he found Edgar to be the only kind of company he could tolerate.

 

And the black pulled closer, howling louder, singing harder, coming home.

 

_This is a problem._

 

What direction was he going? Which one would be the most useful?

 

“Nny? Nny, okay, come on, that's enough.”

 

_Edgar? When did he get here?_

 

No. It was Edgar, but it was the wrong Edgar. Too young. Too early.

 

 _No, too late!_ This is _after!_

 

Someone fed the sensation of skin against skin down the wires in his brain and he remembered his hands, Edgar's hands.

 

“Nny, it's me. It's okay.”

 

The light startled him and he pulled away from Edgar's hands. It was the hotel, it was Edgar and Devi and Jimmy and Tenna and the radio and everything rushed back in on him at once, nearly knocking him forward.

 

But Edgar caught him.

 

“I'm okay, I'm okay,” Johnny said. “It's fine.”

 

He was breathing harder than he remembered needing a reason for.

 

“What did you see?” Jimmy asked.

 

“I don't know if saw anything, I was – the black. It saw me, it came closer, but it took it a while. It doesn't recognize this one as much as it does the first one. It wanted – it wanted me to go the first one. It was pulling for it. That's the stuff I can't get away from when I sing. If I sing using the second one, it still pulls me down, and I can't do everything at once, and it just... gets me.”

 

“It didn't take Edgar much effort to get you out of this.”

 

“That me already knows him, already likes him. He's connected to nearly everything that me did. It's an easy link.”

 

“But the first one...” Tenna trailed off before getting to the uncomfortable part, but Johnny was happy to finish it for her.

 

“The first one _killed_ Edgar. He remembers Edgar, but I think you'll agree the association is a little _different._ ”

 

“So, am I going to be any good for this at all?” Edgar asked.

 

“Yeah, you can still help. You're just...” He took steadying breaths, tried to be sure he was just himself. “You're appealing to me, _this me_ , and trying to find me under the other two. Which works because 'boyfriend' is a lot different than 'victim.'” Johnny tried to smile, and it was met with equally half-hearted efforts in return. “When it's just the most recent guy, you affect him directly.”

 

“What else did you experience?” Devi asked. “Voices? Songs?”

 

Johnny squeezed his eyes shut. “My own voice, I don't know.”

 

“ _I'm black then I'm white_

_no, something isn't right”_

 

“No!” Johnny shouted suddenly, startling even himself. “She was there, she said something. She played the song. She – she doesn't care about the most recent one either. She wants the first one, the black thing wants the first one.”

 

“So we need to look at that one,” Devi said.

 

“You were the one yelling at me for doing this before, you know,” Johnny said.

 

“Well, now we're in a controlled environment.”

 

It was so much easier to invite the oldest one when he was singing. Other than curiosity, there was no reason to go back as far as the first Johnny. Johnny knew what he'd done both in the abstract and in some cases very specifically.

 

“You good to go?” Devi asked.

 

“I still can't believe it's _you_ doing this,” Johnny mumbled. “Like you're punishing me for lying.”

 

“That's not what this is.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “Go ahead, Jimmy.”

 

Jimmy turned the static up again.

 

He hoped he could just sit, empty, waiting, and then the memory of the right person would come to him without him having to invite it like some brain vampire, but it had been trained well, and without singing to be a spark, it waited for him.

 

There were voices. He looked at Devi and her eyes widened a little, but he was already drifting to the point that he couldn't be certain he could identify subtle expressions. But he knew her. Her absolutely knew her.

 

The voices were screaming, pleading, bargaining. Filthy things suddenly betraying their true nature when Johnny put a time limit on their lives.

 

_They should be grateful they got to see their real selves. I taught them the truth._

 

Voices blurred into each other, rose and fell like breathing tides, seeped into songs like blood into t-shirts.

 

_“Hello.”_

 

And the black rushed in on him, screamed at him, it had been so long since he fed the wall, it was out, it was _loose_ , it didn't make _sense_ , this had already happened.

 

“ _You'll lose everything by the end”_

 

_I think I've always suspected it would be that way._

 

“... _coming home”_

 

_No._

 

It wanted him and it pulled at him and it would consume him if he let it get too close.

 

“ _I'm gonna run away now and never look back”_

 

_What are you doing? Are you encouraging me or trying to kill me?_

 

The voices garbled and swirled, stronger ones bubbled to the top.

 

“ _You understand, I think. You're not going to remember, but you understand, and that's all we need.”_

 

_No._

 

_“Don't worry. I hear you've always been easily distracted.”_

 

“Johnny!”

 

More voices.

 

Something was wrong with – him? ( _Us._ )

 

People reaching out to him, stop, stop stop.

 

Why couldn't he wake up, why was he stuck here?

 

_This is why I don't like sleeping. This is how we get into spots like this. I should stop needing, stop feeling, stop –_

 

_Stop._

 

“Nny, come on, come on! Are you in there?”

 

Hands and voices and all of it too much. Things calling to him no matter which way he looked, nothing to tell him what to follow or whether to follow at all. He knew all the voices about the same amount. People he'd met once, talked with, probably killed.

 

The monster from the wall was there with him and someone else.

 

“ _I'm looking forward to this. Now you know where to go, so maybe this should wait until later.”_

 

The world split and spiraled around him, glitched out of existence and then rebooted itself in bright light, panicked voices and _oh god, oh god, I need out._

 

Johnny fell forward, his palms hitting the carpet with a soft thud, chest and shoulders heaving. “It's her,” he panted, “it's her.”

 

Edgar took hold of Johnny's elbows. “It's okay, we've got you. You're here.”

 

Johnny looked up at him, his breath still coming in short bursts. “She is too. She's everywhere he is, the black comes back with her and she's just _there_. It's closer every time. There's so much stuff in there and I don't know what any of it means.”

 

“She can't be like us, then,” Tenna said. “Unless we all have static telepathy and didn't know it.”

 

“No,” Edgar said. “I think not.”

 

“So if she flares up like this reacting to the _old_ Nny...,” Devi said.

 

Edgar swallowed. “Then she's not like _us,_ she's like _Todd._ Left over from the first time.”

 

Johnny rocked forward. His head softly collided with Edgar's chest and what images he'd tried to hold on to rapidly faded from his mind. Ink on wet paper. “I don't even know who she is.”

 

“Does the old Johnny know?” Devi asked. “Does he recognize her?”

 

“I don't know, I'm kinda busy panicking every time. And when it's enough of him, it's hard to be any of me.” He took several long breaths. “I can't hold on to him.”

 

Jimmy held his clasped hands in front of his mouth. “Shit.”

 

“I don't remember anything that makes sense from that guy,” Johnny continued. “I'm not even sure if what I remember was his reality, but it's,” he tried to slow his breathing again, “it's not in order, even if it is real.”

 

“Well, did you hear Edgar?” Devi asked. “Is that why you came out of it?”

 

“I – ” There was nothing concrete anymore. There may never have been. “No. They just let go of me.”

 

Her shoulders drooped. “So, we didn't get you out of that?”

 

Johnny shook his head. “And I didn't either. I think it was _her._ The static woman, the blog woman, whatever she is.” He took deep breaths, trying to believe his body was his own. “What was I doing?”

 

“Not much, actually,” Jimmy said. “You were quiet for a long time and then you just started saying things that didn't make sense.”

 

“You weren't here,” Devi said. “But in a way, neither was he. So maybe we're okay.”

 

“I guess she isn't interested in hurting you guys,” Johnny said.

 

“Or _you_ aren't,” Devi said, poking his knee with the corner of her book.

 

Edgar settled a hand on Johnny's shoulder. “Do you want to find this woman, or run from her?”

 

Johnny picked his head up to look at Edgar. “I don't think I have a choice.”

 

Tenna shrunk back a bit, gripping her ankles. “I really don't like the sound of this at all.”

 

“I think she's going to find _me_ ,” Johnny said. He looked nervously at the others, twisting the key on his neck around two fingers. “But maybe only if I keep singing. Only with the other two active. If they're out, then she gets closer. The black gets closer. Then they know where I am.”

 

The others fell silent, biting lips, averting gazes, suddenly becoming very interested in shirt hems.

 

“It's up to you,” Edgar said. “It's your head.”

 

“You don't think you can sing at all without inviting in the old guys?” Tenna asked.

 

“Not anymore,” Johnny admitted. “I could before, but now it...” He stopped and looked up at the others for a moment and then dropped limply back against Edgar, surrendering. “You saw. It's happening without me, no matter how good I feel. I wanted this to – I thought I could, but I blurred the fucking lines too much and now I don't think I'm in control of it anymore. I mean, fucking look at this! You can turn off my personality with random household objects! Radios, refrigerators, radiators...”

 

“Shit,” Devi muttered.

 

Tenna exchanged nervous glances with Jimmy but wouldn't say anything.

 

“We can't do this anymore, can we?” Jimmy asked.

 

The others were quiet. They looked at the floor, at their hands, anywhere but Johnny.

 

“No,” Johnny said softly. “If I keep doing this... I don't know what happens when the black thing gets close enough. I don't know what happens when I get stuck. I don't know anything and it's all fucked up.”

 

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes and he looked down at his knees. He'd wanted this, he'd almost forced everyone to do this, and without this he didn't know who he was or who he could even still be. Would he still be a victim of his own head even without singing? Was all this even worse than what he was telling them? With all the trust he'd been asking of the others, did he even trust himself anymore?

 

Who even _was_ 'himself'?

 

“It's okay,” Edgar said, though Edgar was always saying that. “We can always do something else. Don't worry. We'll figure out what all this is, see how we can help it, and then maybe we can start again.”

 

“We _do_ have a problem with this now, though,” Devi said.

 

“Uh, yeah, clearly,” Jimmy snipped.

 

“No, I mean... that TV show.”

 

Johnny's eyes widened. “Oh. Shit.”

 

 

 

A few days later, Elize contacted them about their interview with Mysterious Mysteries. They agreed to go, hoping they could make a decision about performing at the last minute. Maybe the show wouldn't want to see Johnny sing at all and it would all be a fun interview with a plane ride thrown in for good measure. Maybe the 'closer' Johnny was so worried about would be thrown off by putting some significant distance between them and their last location and he could get away with another show a few thousand miles away.

 

When they arrived at the airport, Elize met them as their escort and launched into a quick rundown of how the next few days would unfold.

 

“We'll get in in the early afternoon,” she explained. “We'll use the time we have to get you situated and get all your things sent to your rooms. Tomorrow morning, we'll shoot all the interview material we need for the special. We'll be doing further shooting that evening, and we should have you on a plane back here the next morning.”

 

“Not a second to spare, huh?” Tenna asked.

 

“We've got a lot riding on this episode, and we're confident it will be a success, but there are still budget restrictions to consider, so this is the length of time we agreed upon. It took more than a few phone calls to get you here.” She opened her briefcase. “Speaking of getting you _anywhere_ , you'll need these. We took some liberties with the information.”

 

She produced five plastic cards from her bag and passed out a piece of identification to each of them, though they quickly realized none of it was real.

 

“Oh,” Edgar said, looking at his questionable photo card. “My name is Vasquez now.”

 

“Nice.” Johnny high-fived him. “I got Carrero.”

 

“Delgado,” Devi reported.

 

“Fuck, I got George,” Tenna said. “I wanted Giraffe or something.”

 

“Davis,” Jimmy said, clearly disappointed.

 

“Come on, let's get moving.” Elize waved for them to follow her and they trailed after her, absorbed in their new fake selves.

 

Johnny was more interested in his fake identity than the airport. He'd just become a person thanks to the powers of lying and laminate.

 

“Edgar, Edgar, look!” He tugged Edgar's sleeve and shook his card at him. “There's just an X in the gender box!”

 

“We've seen that be an issue in the past. We wanted to avoid any _confrontation_ while we go through security,” Elize explained. “And you seemed more volatile than airport security.”

 

Johnny smiled so hard his face hurt. “I'm telling everyone who asks if I'm a boy or a girl from now on that I'm Planet X. I'm so fucking happy.”

 

Edgar smiled fondly at him and affectionately bumped his shoulder. “I'm glad.”

 

“What's wrong? You've got the nervous happy face.”

 

Edgar laughed, and then lowered his voice to keep the conversation away from Elize. “Should we have told her I have a whole name already?”

 

“Heck no,” Tenna said. “Now we can call you Double V. Extra V. V with a side of V.”

 

“No. No, you can't.”

 

“Fuckin' watch me.”

 

Johnny scratched at the face on his card. “It's probably better that you didn't tell her. If you mysteriously had a name and the rest of us didn't, we'd look pretty suspicious and probably would not be getting on a plane.”

 

“This is extremely sketchy, though, right?” Devi asked. “I'm not the only person who thinks so? What kind of TV show gives you a fake ID so they can put you on a plane?”

 

“One that has clearly weighed some serious risks,” Johnny said.

 

Devi pocketed her card. “Yeah, well, I hope you're prepared to do the same when we get there.”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny said, his cheery mood severely dampened by Devi's insistence on bringing up reality. “We'll see.”

 

 

 

Getting four and a half invisible people through security was more complicated than expected, though they'd only been told about the concept of security to start with. Scanners found people that didn't exist, detectors found metal in the air. Elize was about to make some phone calls when a guard just coming on duty ran over to them excitedly chirping that he'd seen them perform three times and was so excited to see them. He clapped Jimmy on the shoulder like an old friend and gushed with enthusiasm about what a great start to his day this would be.

 

The strange part was that once this one guard saw them and interacted with them enough, the rest of the guards seemed to see them too, no singing required.

 

“I used to get counted on field trips when I'd sneak onto them,” Edgar said as he stepped through the scan. “Maybe this is the same thing. We're just blending into the mindless millions being scanned.”

 

Johnny stepped in after him. “I guess.”

 

The machine flashed red and beeped urgently.  


“Oh, sorry,” Security Fan said as he checked the monitor attached to the scanner. “It's your head.”

 

“Wow, they detect crazy now,” Tenna said. “Neat.”

 

Johnny made a face at her.

 

“Probably your necklace,” the guy said, motioning entirely too close to it. Johnny flinched and ducked away from him.

 

“Yeah, I can't take that off.”

 

“It's just till you get through here. You just put in this bowl, you won't lose it.”

 

“No, I mean it doesn't come off.”

 

“We'll have to pat you down then.”

 

Johnny's eyes went wide, he tried to shrink into his ribs, and then turned on his heel to walk back out of the scanner. Risks of being turned into his old self on television shriveled to nothing in comparison to the looming threat of strange hands on his skin. “Nevermind, I don't want to be on TV.”

 

“What, no, come on, it's no big deal. Just step over here.”

 

Security guided him to the side of the scanner while the others watched with palpable apprehension.

 

“It's okay, I just need to look at your neck.”

 

With someone else's hands on his throat, Johnny understood keenly why he hadn't been allowed to bring his knife.

 

The touch only took seconds and was conducted with gloves and hands at weird angles, but Johnny felt the effects of it for the next hour, up until they were shuffled down the temporary walkway to their plane. He shuddered at random as he imagined the security guy relishing the contact.

 

“Can I help?” Edgar asked as they followed Elize.

 

“Yeah, remove all the skin from my collar bones to my chin.”

 

“Okay, should this be an artistic presentation afterward? Should I arrange for matting and framing?”

 

Johnny smiled and the horrible feeling in his skin dissipated slightly. “Yeah. No need to let standards drop.”

 

“I'm feeling shadow box. How do you feel about giving up a tooth? Maybe a vial of blood?”

 

“Easy, Hannibal, is this an art project or a voodoo doll?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Whatever you're into.”

 

“ _I'm_ into it,” Jimmy called back to them. “You selling this later?”

 

Johnny clicked his tongue. “Wow, I didn't know I had a 'People Not To Trust With My VooDoo Self' list until this moment. Learn something new every day.”

 

They turned the corner in the strange collapsible tunnel and found just a plane sitting at the end of it.

 

“Oh,” Tenna said. “I guess this makes more sense than – I was just expecting, like, stairs.”

 

Jimmy frowned as he shifted his duffel bag in his arms. “Yeah. Weird.”

 

Johnny clutched his own bag tightly as they all peered into the door of the plane behind a group of other passengers. The ceiling was lower than he'd imagined, and while he wasn't in danger of crashing into it, it still pressed in on him as he stepped a single foot inside the plane.

 

“This looks exactly like TV to me, Edgar,” Devi said as she disappeared into the cabin.

 

Edgar glanced back at Johnny rather than strain to see inside the plane. “You okay?”

 

“I'm getting the feeling I'm about to be put in a cage.”

 

Edgar frowned in sympathy. “Sorry, I don't know how to make that go away. Are we still going? Can you handle this?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The path in the center was narrow, with the blue seats crammed together as tightly as possible, three on each side of the aisle.

 

Elize gestured to a cluster of seats on one side of the plane. “These two rows are ours. Arrange yourselves as you like.”

 

“Window,” Johnny said from the back of the line.

 

They clustered and bumped into each other and the seats, finally leaving Johnny at a window with Edgar next to him, and Tenna at the window behind him with Devi and Elize. Jimmy was content with the aisle seat next to Edgar.

 

Tenna leaned forward and pushed her face between Johnny's seat and the wall of the plane. “I'm excited about the bag of shitty peanuts!” she sang.

 

Edgar turned in his seat and spoke over the top of it. “There might even be entire awful meals!”

 

“I hope we go through the Bermuda Triangle,” Jimmy said as he fought with his seat belt.

 

Devi sighed loudly. “Jimmy, we are not even flying over water.”

 

“Yeah, that's why it would be awesome if we ended up there.”

 

They sat for ages. Jimmy and Tenna played with every button above their heads, summoning attendants and blowing jets of freezing cold air in all directions while Elize tried to brief them on their itinerary. After several minutes, she gave up, pushed her sunglasses back up her nose, and settled into what might have been sleep.

 

Johnny was locked on the view outside the window, even if it was only pavement. Carts rumbled by underneath them, guys in vests waved bright cones and in the distance, other planes lifted from the ground as though gently guided into the sky by a hand from below.

 

“Leave it to visible people to make something as fucking magical as just hopping in a tube and flying into the air as unpleasant as possible,” he said to the glass.

 

Beside him, Edgar and Jimmy were excitedly interpreting the unfoldable safety card.

 

“Look at this,” Jimmy said, poking a drawing very close to Edgar's knee. “You can just fucking pick up the entire door on the side of the this thing if we crash.”

 

“And then hurl it into the ocean, apparently.”

 

“Or into the Bermuda Triangle.”

 

“You're not letting go of that, are you?”

 

“Never give up on your dreams, Edgar.”

 

“Mine are fine. I'd like to give up yours, though.”

 

Jimmy shoved him, which sent Edgar's shoulder crashing into Johnny, which cracked Johnny's head against the window.

 

“Hey!”

 

“Sorry, he pushed me,” Edgar said. “You okay?”

 

Devi leaned forward. “What kind of kindergarten shit are you guys doing up there?”

 

“We're fine,” Edgar told her. “Proximity problems.”

 

Just then, the plane lurched and drifted slightly backward. Jimmy leaned over Edgar's lap to look out the window but Edgar only slightly inclined his head toward Johnny to try to get his own view.

 

The plane simply drove to the runway. It was so mundane it was a little ridiculous. All this time, Johnny had imagined planes just automatically poised to rocket into the air at a moment's notice. Instead, they sat inside this plane for half a hour and then watched it rumble over to a designated area for air rocketing.

 

As the acceleration pushed them back against their chairs, Edgar gently gripped Johnny's sleeve.

 

The noise and the pressure increased and Johnny swore he heard words whipping by his head. Whatever they were, they were drowned by the sound, the pain in his ears, the novelty of the experience. But it still dropped a stone into his stomach.

 

_Remember what you have to do when you get there._

 

Gradually, the pressure eased, the noise lessened, and the world rapidly fell out from the underneath them.

 

Johnny couldn't take in enough of the sight outside the window. Bits of clouds whipped around the wings and then they rose above them, watching instead of buildings and cars a world of rolling cotton.

 

“Wow.”

 

“This doesn't feel real,” Edgar said.

 

“Maybe we're having a group hallucination,” Devi suggested.

 

Tenna sighed against he window. “Cool.”

 

No matter what else happened on the flight, Johnny caught himself glancing out the window. They were given refreshments and snacks and the plane had a headphone jack in every seat for radio, but neither of these things took his attention away from staring into the sky.

 

When he plugged his headphones into the provided jack, a woman's voice sang to him.

 

“ _...give yourself to me  
you hold the key...”_

 

Johnny abruptly switched the channel, but the following one was full of static. He tore the headphones from the seat so quickly the cord whipped out of control and lashed across Edgar's arm.

 

“Ow!”

 

“Sorry, I was – ” He held the headphones up by way of explanation.

 

“It's okay.” Edgar narrowed his eyes slightly. “Are _you_ okay?”

 

“I don't know what I'm going to do when I get there.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “None of us do.”

 

Johnny looked back out to the sky. “Yeah.”

 

 

 

When the plane landed, they were taken through a whirlwind of stops and checkpoints. Elize led them through the airport, into a shuttle van through a strange city, and to a hotel much nicer than anything they'd ever stayed in, though she apologized for it as though it were somehow lacking. They had done nothing but set down their things when Elize herded them back out with Tenna's bag of makeup supplies.

 

“Your instruments were brought to the studio. We'd like to get some photos this afternoon if we could get you all in makeup after lunch. We'll do this again tomorrow for the interview, but since we have the time tonight, we're not wasting it.”

 

Edgar stayed close to Johnny for their walk to lunch at a local trendy cafe. A block away, Johnny found himself rooted to the spot on the corner. Something across the street pulled at him just like it had the last time he'd performed. Maybe she was over there. Standing by quietly in a posh book store.

 

Edgar gently nudged him out of it. “Try not to focus on it,” he said.

 

“Can you feel that too?”

 

“No. But I know what you look like when you do. Come on.” They hurried to catch up to the others and just ducked inside the cafe with the rest of the group.

 

No one inside looked as through they questioned Elize's purchase of six meals.

 

She gave them even more information than she'd tried to dump on them on the plane, all of it passing right through Johnny as he waiting for the static to come back, for that woman to find him, for the right tune to be piped into the building like toxic gas and remove him from himself forever.

 

And he was here because they wanted him to sing. What would it be like if he never got back out of his own head? Was it like dying or being imprisoned?

 

He'd done one of those twice. The other one scared him.

 

 

 

 

Tenna had had help to make them up for the interview in the morning. Johnny had always appreciated the way they looked for shows, but today they actually felt _beautiful_. Extra sparkle, subtle details, usage of blood that wasn't too much or too little. It was the exact thing Johnny had always envisioned. Someone had even made Tenna a bit ashy looking so she could be dead right along with them as they stood in a small hallway awaiting the setup for the interview that would form part of their special segment on the show

 

Johnny peered out into the room, watching the cameras and microphones rolling into place. “Here we go, Edgar. You've now come full circle. Guy born from TV becomes TV.”

 

Edgar put a hand over his heart like he thought it might stop. “Oh. Okay, sorry, we might need to cancel this. I could become a self-contained paradox.”

 

“Too bad, we already hurled ourselves through the air for this,” Johnny told him. “I'll make sure I'm there when you turn inside out and start get a cable signal, though.”

 

“Wow. There certainly are perks to this boyfriend thing.”

 

“Only the finest in giving a fuck when Johnny C likes you.” He pinned the key on his neck down before it make too much of a fuss reacting to his name.

 

“What about John Carrero?”

 

“Oh, fuck, you gotta watch yourself with that one. That asshole is capable of anything. He would definitely leave you to die.”

 

Edgar grinned. “I'll be sure to steer clear, then.”

 

 

 

The interview was like so many others they'd had in terms of content: Initial difficulty understanding Johnny's gender followed by 'yes, we're really invisible,' 'yes, we're really performing,' and 'no, we're not aliens (and we're really sad about it).' Because it was television, though, they'd occasionally have to do 'another take' of a certain question 'for editing', which Johnny immediately raised concerns about. He had to be told several times to stop giving wildly different answers when a question was re-shot and no one listened to his objections beyond assuring him that he'd be portrayed exactly as he was. Mysterious Mysteries, they were promised, was very concerned with the truth of every situation. Johnny then reacted by amping up the ridiculous level of his 'scary' personality. The others tried to follow suit, but the questions often came out of nowhere and caught them off guard and occasionally the dead persona would slip.

 

In the end, Johnny didn't know who they'd appear to be on screen and the event was such a blur that they'd hardly had a real conversation with their interviewer before they were being asked to perform.

 

“Oh, so you, uh, definitely need to see that, huh?” Tenna asked.

 

“Well, yes, of course! Why else would you be here if not your visibility problem? We're aimed at exposing hoaxes and finding truth. So far you're claiming to be the latter.”

 

“We are,” Johnny said. The cracks in his mind throbbed and glowed with the prospect of leaking their contents once more, but maybe if the show were quick, it wouldn't matter. Maybe it would add to the show somehow. Maybe he could do just enough... “We'll do it.”

 

The others regarded him nervously.

 

“Trust me,” he said, though he didn't entirely trust himself.

 

The Homicides were set up in a room to play for a group of people who had presumably never seen them. They and their instruments were inspected for smoke and mirrors and then they were shown into the room with nothing between them and an audience but a line of caution tape.

 

Someone called out, “Okay, whenever you're ready!”, the noise level in the room dropped, and Johnny was left standing with the future peering in at him while the past threatened to burst out.

 

“Okay, then,” Johnny said to the room as he flexed his fingers around a Mysterious Mysteries branded microphone. “Well, this is cozy, isn't it? Course, you can't hear me. But maybe your cameras can.”

 

He swallowed, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would have been audible even by these people who couldn't hear him speak. Instead, the 'audience' weren't even looking at him. They talked among themselves holding coffee mugs and clipboards and seemingly waiting for the band to be escorted into the room.

 

“Let's just do this,” Johnny said.

 

“You're sure?” Devi asked. “It's worse when you sing, remember? We could still tell them this is fake.”

 

He looked at the people standing across the room from him. “No we can't. These people already can't see us. This is half the thing already. I can do it.”

 

There was a pause while the others silently checked with each other, and then Devi simply counted them in, relinquishing control and terror and just performing.

 

They sailed through an intro, slammed notes to the floor, bled the music as though fear was the best fuel they'd ever had. Still only one person in the captive group gave the tell-tale startle that meant the Homicides had been seen.

 

That was, however, usually all that was needed.

 

“ _the caution tape comes out again_

_and here I fucking am again_

_on my self-guided downward spiral_ ”

 

A few more gasped as Johnny charged forth into the song.

 

“ _orange cones in line they talk_

_of accident inscribed sidewalk_

_'come on, kid, let's see a smile'”_

 

Several people in the back applauded the Homicides' 'trick', and Johnny considered dropping the song entirely now that it seemed he'd asserted his existence to a dozen television interns. But even with the threat of the static woman and the looming black, he loved doing this, and he was going to do it right.

 

“ _hey, fuck you and your smiles too_

_while you pretend I'm not for me_

_broken glass born and steel grew_

_my world sings concrete symphony”_

 

 

Doing it right probably meant they would cut that verse or censor it, but at least he had the satisfaction of doing it.

 

“ _with shredded knees and battle scars_

_dark graffiti on abandoned cars_

_searing pavement, throwing stones_

_manholes into worlds unknown”_

 

She called to him again, the voice in his head, dragging him down, pulling the others up and wrapping them around everything he could perceive. The black thing sensed him, felt him, was angry with him.

 

But he kept singing. _This might be the last time I get to._

 

 

“ _the sirens calling, scream again_

_and here I am fucking am again_

_on my self-guided downward spiral”_

 

He still smiled, still let the song they'd made from a cluster of garbage bring them into view for a group of nobodies. Cracks in his head seeped the past into him, bits of personality pooling at the bottom of his mind. They understood the song he'd tried to make. Maybe they wouldn't have written it that way, and they certainly wouldn't be making a recording for TV of it, but they understood it.

 

And they wanted part of it.

 

“ _words that shine in the dark_

_locks at sundown over the park_

_given blood to the silver mile_

 

_but you want a smile?”_

 

The cracks split, pressing on the inside of his skull, pushing him out of his own head. He was still singing, people were still responding. His other selves would never remove him entirely, not like this. They needed him to do the singing, they – _they don't_ _need_ _anything! They're memories, impressions_! _They're no one!_

 

 

“ _Metal, bones, and cries anew_

_while I smile but just for me_

_the claws that split your flesh in two are_

_my world_

_it sings concrete symphony”_

 

It's just that when you have someone else's memory, you might as well be them.

 

He knew how to kill everyone in the room with just the microphone, maybe a few of Devi's drumsticks if he were really in a pinch or feeling creative. Even as they clapped for him, he saw no reason why they didn't deserve it, why it shouldn't happen right then. They were fool enough to think they knew what they were clapping for, to think their approval mattered at all to him.

 

Something tried to call him back, tried to twist him away. Was it inside him? Out here? Not that it made a difference. He couldn't trust what he was experiencing, no matter where it came from. He never could.

 

And the black. The monster that was so displeased with him. How long had it been since it was fed? How long since someone had given it blood to keep it happy and where it belonged? How long since – No, no, no it had already done this. He'd missed it, but it happened. Wasn't this already done?

 

He talked to the others standing there with him – hadn't they already happened too? – but he didn't know what he was saying. He was spitting words and garbage like everyone else and his brain lurched in his head and why didn't it take pity on its bad servant and just shatter his bones already?

 

Things were very dark.

 

Where was Edgar?

 

He hardly did anything without Edgar ( _yes!)_. He was going to kill him at some point, but the timing was all wrong for both of them, and if you can't do something right, you don't do it, so Edgar stayed alive and confused. He left only that once, after the failed murder, and when Johnny found him standing on his front step a few days later he said something had changed and he was taking one last shot that someone would respond to him being there.

 

Johnny stared at him, shrugged, grabbed his bag, said, “Let's get a Freezie.”

 

And then it was always Freezies and always Edgar but now –

 

 _Edgar_.

 

He _was_ here, he was just new, he was different, he was ( _Edgar!)_ alive. They both were.

 

Sometimes he laughed and sometimes he thought about leaving them all impaled on a chain link fence and something made him think of tossing them from a plane into the Bermuda Triangle while singing a song but whatever brought up that thought also shut it down _(no)_ , shut it all down _(no!)_ , fought him ( _No!)_ and clawed at him _(_ _ **No!**_ _)_ and wanted to tear him in half and –

 

“Johnny!”

 

He gasped and dug into the black, fought against it pulling him into nothing with it, squeezed, hoping he could –

 

“Nny, stop! It's me!”

 

Another gasp and the black was gone, replaced with just dark. And Edgar( _!)_.

 

He exhaled slowly and a soft “oh” left with his breath.

 

Edgar was there, Edgar was everywhere. Johnny was sitting between his legs in the back of a van. A van, _the_ van, _their_ van. He knew these people, he knew this place, he knew this _him_.

 

“Where – is this the van?”

 

Jimmy turned around from his usual _(what?)_ seat. “Bad one, huh?”

 

“We shouldn't have done it,” Devi _(!)_ said, though she didn't look back.

 

Johnny pulled at Edgar's stitched shirt as sickening panic rose in his stomach. “I don't understand, I was just singing! What the fuck happened?!”

 

“That was this morning,” Edgar said gently.

 

“ _This morning?!_ How the fuck – ”

 

Edgar moved slowly but deliberately, gently freeing ( _touching_ ) Johnny's hands from their grip on his shirt, staying calm, maybe humming.

 

Jimmy leaned even more cartoonishly around his seat. “Did it really black you out that long?”

 

“Did you not _notice_?!” Johnny shrieked.

 

“I did,” Edgar said. “I just hoped the proportion of _you_ was still enough.”

 

“How the fuck did I do anything? I don't get it, I – ” He looked around wildly, hoping this was some elaborate joke. “Weren't we supposed to be there another day? What day _is_ it?”

 

“We didn't know what else to do,” Devi said, though she still didn't turn around. “We just thought if we could get you home, it would be okay. You were fine with everything we did, you were just quiet and staring at everyone. I took pictures thinking it would help your memory later in case... in case of this, I guess.”

 

“I rode a plane again without even realizing where I was,” Johnny said, the reality of things weighing in his guts like a brick. _Who had he been? What had he done? Would it always be like this? Would every tune be followed by_ _sudden black and lost time?_

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar said. “We tried. At least we got you out of it.”

 

He'd read books before in which someone described hearing screaming only later realizing they were the ones making the scream, but he'd never believed it could be real until it became a regular feature of his life. It was entirely possible just to be feeling so much, to be reacting so hard, that you just start _going_ and your awareness needs time to catch up.

 

Suddenly, it was Edgar all around him again, all arms and sleeves and stitches and loose glitter against his skin _(!)._ Someone else had been him for several hours. He had been someone else. Someone else's brain collections had steered him around and got on a plane and went home with his friends and probably shared a bed with Edgar and he didn't know. He didn't know.

 

“Oh god, I'm going to kill you!” he screamed.

 

“Nny, no, listen to me!”

 

Edgar tried to get a hold on him, but Johnny flailed his arms, tried to push Edgar away _(away! Stop this!)._ “That's not a threat! I'm not – ! But I might! I don't know! What if I sing in the shower and turn into them and burn the fucking house down!? I'd never know!”

 

“Ow, ow, Nny, stop, let go of my shirt!”

 

“I can't, I can't, oh my god, I knew how to kill everyone in the room and then there was the other Edgar, oh my god ohmygod!” The other(?) Edgar. _Shouldn't there be only one?_ There was only his Edgar, only Edgar who talked himself out of death and continued talking to keep his life and was at the very least the person Johnny would have killed last.

 

_This is broken. I am dreadfully broken._

 

“Nny, it's okay! We're all fine!”

 

“Holy fuck, should I pull over?”

 

“It's fine, Ten, just get us somewhere!”

 

“ _I think there's a flaw in my code,_ ” Johnny said. Or sang. Or thought.

 

Edgar sat back. “What?”

 

 _There are other people in my head and they're melting into me._ “ _These voices won't leave me alone.”_

 

“Are you... singing? Or telling me something?”

 

 _I can't get out of this._ “ _Can't wake up, this is not a dream.”_

 

“Shit, I don't know what he's doing! I – I don't know what to do!”

 

 _I'm a broken machine. I'm malfunctioning._ “ _Part of a machine, you are not a human being.”_

 

Edgar grabbed his hands and held them tight against his chest while Johnny tried to tell him, tried to explain.

 

 _I want to stop all of it. I want to run, Edgar._ “ _Gonna burn my house down into an ugly black. Gonna run away now and never look back.”_

 

Nothing was coming out the right way, his words were being hijacked by something else.

 

“Guys, I need some ideas!” Edgar called over one shoulder.

 

 _“_ I'm pulling the fuck over!” Tenna shouted as the van drifted to the side of the road.

 

_She's still out there, she's still in the black. Please take me home. “There's something in the dark and I want to go home.”_

 

That was close, at least.

 

“It's all fucking lyrics,” Jimmy said, crawling out of his chair.

 

 _They're so close._ “ _This'll all be over tonight.”_

 

Devi peered around her chair. “Oh my god.”

 

“But that means it's _him_ , right?” Tenna said, digging her fingers into the back of her seat. “Lyrics and shit isn't the other guys, this one is ours!”

 

“Yeah, okay,” Jimmy said. “So he's just... stuck.”

 

Devi sunk back into her chair, held her hands over her face. “This is shit that happens to robots, this isn't a real fucking thing!”

 

“ _Part of a machine, you are not a human being.”_

 

She looked back at him in horror and he bit his lip against more songs pouring out of him.

 

“Something wants him to sing,” Edgar said. “It's just pulling lyrics out of him to get him to – What do I do?!”

 

“We sing back at him?” Tenna suggested. “Like singing the whole song is supposed to get you to stop singing a single line of something? Try Belarus!”

 

“Shock him or hit him or something,” Jimmy said. “It works with amnesia and people flipping out on TV!”

 

Johnny tugged against Edgar's grip, afraid to try to speak for fear he'd boil over into song.

 

“Okay, listen to me,” Edgar said, pressing Johnny's hands tighter against him. “I'm going to try something really stupid. You're gonna have to forgive me because _all_ our options are stupid and I don't know what else to do.” He nodded toward Jimmy and the others. “Would you guys mind looking the other way for a second?”

 

“What the hell are you doing?” Jimmy asked.

 

“Please?”

 

Jimmy looked rapidly between Edgar and Johnny, trying to understand what was happening, but obviously failing. “Okay?”

 

When Tenna looked away too, Edgar looked into Johnny's face. “I'm really sorry about this.”

 

Johnny tried to lean away from him, tried to run from whatever painful thing was coming, but found everything in him froze when instead of punching him in the face, Edgar kissed him _(!!)._ It was quick and a little terrified ( _you can't do that_ ), but when the sensation of it processed in Johnny's head ( _I can't?_ ), he knew where he was, who he was, why he was here. He still didn't remember getting on a plane a second time, but –

 

“Oh,” he said.

 

Edgar stared at him, eyes wide in frightened expectation. “Oh?”

 

_It's me? Just me?_

 

“I – okay. It's okay. I'm okay.” He was a little out of breath, but he felt solid in the seat, in his skull.

 

“Can we look now?” Tenna called back.

 

“Just a second,” Johnny said. His words were his own and his actions were his own and that was a sad qualifier for 'okay', but he'd take it.

 

Maybe it was a proper kiss as a thank you, maybe it was because he was terrified and he had a history of terror kisses, maybe he didn't have a reason (which added to the terror), maybe it would have been nice if the flash from Devi's camera hadn't illuminated everything a half-second before it was a complete gesture.

 

“Hey!”

 

“It's for the memories,” Devi said smugly. “I'll just add this in with the other shit. You know, in case you forget.”

 

“Oh my god, fuck you!”

 

“I'm glad you're okay,” she said.

 

It was the last thing he wanted any of them seeing, let alone having photos of, but with the screaming black retreating back to the cracks in his head and dissolving into fragments, he was _able_ to laugh, and decided that the best course of action.

 

At first, it was just him, and then after a nervous pause, the others joined him, sending an air of relief through the van. The tension in Edgar melted fell away from him and he hugged Johnny tightly.

 

“God, you scared the hell out of me.”

 

“I hate you all,” Johnny said. “You're horrible people.”

 

Jimmy batted his eyelashes and swatted at Johnny's knee. “Aww, I like you, too.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

“Okay, so!” Tenna yelled over the others, “I'm sorry, but I really need to discuss this: Did Edgar just save the day with some kind of fairy tale kiss, is that what we got here? I'm not wrong about this? Yes?”

 

“Jimmy said to try to shock him,” Edgar said, his face going pink. “I thought maybe one out of nowhere instead of asking might do it, but I – I mean, I thought it was dumb, I just didn't have anything else to try.”

 

“It's still dumb,” Johnny told him.

 

Edgar shoved his shoulder. “You're _welcome.”_

 

“Thanks. Now I'm a proper princess at last. I get to go live in a castle and have animal friends and be on all the merchandise and sing – well, no, I guess not that. But still. Merchandise.”

 

“We'll figure something out,” Edgar told him.

 

“But if we don't, that was it,” Johnny said as his shoulders sagged. He looked at the others, still painted with blood and glitter. On his on cheek, the remaining glitter on his neon blue star scratched his fingertips. “If there's nothing to figure out, if I'm just stuck, then that was the last time we'll do any of this.”

 

“Then we got it on TV,” Tenna said sweetly. “That's kind of awesome.”

 

“You're taking this well,” Johnny said.

 

“We've had a bit more time to cope with the idea than you have,” Devi said.

 

“I just can't – never again? Am I going to lose myself if I so much as hum?”

 

Jimmy sank in his chair, his face sliding down the side of it. “We want you to be able to sing, too,” he said. “But we'll be okay if you can't.”

 

“I get that! But I'm not sure _I_ will be okay with it.”

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar said quietly. “I barely know how to help you. It's all just lucky guessing.”

 

It may have been someone else's memory talking, but at that particular second, Johnny had one desire.

 

“Can we go get Freezies?”

 

 

 

Tenna pulled them into the convenience store at an hour when only convenience stores are open and only convenience stores are needed.

 

“I don't know if they'll even have the machine on,” Tenna said as she shut off the engine.

 

Jimmy pulled the door open. “They will. They turn them off at three. It's only one.”

 

Edgar exchanged a weird glance with Devi.

 

“How do you know that, Jimmy?” Devi asked.

 

“I came to one of these at three fifteen once.”

 

Edgar and Jimmy both hovered nervously near the door, offering hands and arms to Johnny like they thought he'd kill himself stepping foot outside the van. “I'm fine,” he told them, though Edgar still looked ready to embrace him as though he'd descended from a perilous mountain climbing excursion.

 

Tenna poked at Jimmy as they filed into the store. “Did you come to one of these with tattoo guy?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe.”

 

Inside the store were a few large men with enormous beards and a single middle-aged man in dark glasses behind the counter engrossed in what looked suspiciously like a Bible.

 

Winding through the aisles of snacks and magazines, they approached the Freezie machines on the far wall and found them still operational at this time of night, though the flavors were cause for curiosity.

 

“Where did they even come up with these flavors?” Edgar asked he he looked up and down the long wall of shiny metal machines.

 

Johnny poked at the label on the one directly in front of him which read 'Frosty Peanut'. “I don't... know. Peanut strikes me as hard to liquefy and freeze, is that just me?”

 

Edgar shook his head. “No, I'm struggling with that too.”

 

“You could melt peanut butter,” Jimmy suggested.

 

The machine loomed over Johnny, daring him to drink partially frozen liquid peanut butter. “With that, I think I'll pass.”

 

Edgar walked the length of the towering machines and stopped when one in particular caused him some distress. “I need someone to come over here and tell me this doesn't actually say 'Icy Ham'.”

 

Tenna popped up over his shoulder holding a small bag of beef jerky. “Oh. I have some bad news for you, my friend.”

 

“I don't even want to know how they did this.”

 

“Maybe they just chucked one of these bags into the machine,” Tenna said, waving her beef jerky in Edgar's face. He pushed her away and looked a little sick.

 

“Does it make it better if I tell you I have a 'Slush Gravy' flavor at this end?” Johnny asked.

 

“Oh, good,” Edgar said. “We can combine it with the ham.”

 

“I don't get this.” Johnny surveyed the array of inedible frozen drink options and witnessed nearly every Thanksgiving feast he'd ever seen on television just in frozen slush form. “Does no one here drink fucking fruit anymore?”

 

Devi ripped open a bag of Cheez DooDads, spilling a few on the floor. “Nny, there was absolutely no fruit content in the ones we drank at home.”

 

“Fine: Does no one drink high fructose corn syrup made to ensure that children have no idea what real fruit tastes like anymore?”

 

“How do you feel about drinking it with the souls of the damned?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny's irritation melted and he slid next to Edgar, holding his empty cup eagerly in both hands. “Ooooh, go on.”

 

“Cherry Doom,” Edgar read from the label. “'All the sugar you need for a whole week, and at least three damned souls in every medium-sized cup.'”

 

“Suddenly losing large chunks of time and boarding planes while I'm possessed by my own brain seems totally worth it.” He thrust the cup under the spout and forced the lever to the left. Electric red Freezie ice with hints of a darker, thicker red swirl began to spill into his cup, the chill stinging his palm as it filled.

 

“I wonder if Pepito knows that he's got a leak somewhere and it empties into a Freezie machine,” Tenna said, tucking boxes of snack bars and candy under her arm.

 

At the mention of Pepito's name, Johnny felt like he was being watched. He hadn't been singing. Had he been humming? He didn't think so. Was the static woman back? Had she followed him to the store?

 

Johnny straightened his shoulders and turned, slightly spilling some 'Cherry Doom' on his hand and the machine sputtered to a stop.

 

The bearded guys had all left the store. Johnny and the others were alone in the store with the cashier and an unusually large number of security cameras, all of which had turned to watch the store's only occupants.

 

“The fuck is this?” Jimmy said. “Can these cameras see us?”

 

“A lot of cameras can,” Devi replied.

 

Jimmy slid up beside her, keeping a nervous eye on the cameras. “I thought they had to be operated by people who could see us.”

 

The overweight man behind the counter stumbled out on the floor and slowly approached them.

 

“That there,” he said, pointing shakily at the cup in Johnny's hand, “is the elixir of the Devil.”

 

Devi stopped crunching on her Cheese DooDads. “You have got to be kidding me.”

 

Johnny held his hand up toward her and nodded toward the old man. “Can you see me?”

 

“Only those who been touched by the Devil himself can touch that stuff,” the man continued, still focused on Johnny's drink. “They told me you'd all come, that I wouldn't be able to see you at first, but then I would recognize what this is . You're the people of the Devil himself, you are.”

 

“Annnd you... carry his product?” Johnny asked.

 

“Not willingly, I assure you.”

 

Edgar glanced at Johnny and then to the old man. “You're being kept hostage by a Freezie machine?”

 

“I have been chosen to guard this place! To defend it from the likes of you!”

 

“Defending the 24/7 from Satan.” Tenna handed the man a ten dollar bill. “Okay. Well, we're here. What now?”

 

The man dropped the bill like it had burned him and began wiping his hands on his clothes. “The Devil's money!”

 

Tenna shrugged as she watched the money flutter to the floor. “I mean, I'm pretty sure it's ours. Maybe Dib's. Probably ours. But if you don't want it, I'm totally okay just taking this shit and leaving.”

 

Johnny smiled at the man. “I gotta say, you've been lied to about this stuff.” He shook the cup in the man's face. “I've never met Satan at all.”

 

“His associates _would_ deny it.”

 

“But his son makes decent ginger snaps,” Johnny finished.

 

The man backed away. “Now, now, you just stay right there. I know what bein' undead does to you. We're gonna bring the Father out here an', and this'll all be –!”

 

“I don't think that's necessary.” The terror in the old man sent flares up through the cracks in Johnny's head, but they weren't invading, they were helping. “We're really quite good people.”

 

“Oh, definitely,” Jimmy said.

 

“I've never been terribly worried about what type of people I killed,” Johnny said, smiling adoringly at the others, “but the ones I keep with me? They're all _quality._ ”

 

Johnny took a long drink of the Cherry Doom. It was an extreme sour cherry flavor with a bite he couldn't identify. It was bone-chillingly cold all the way down.

 

The man gasped in horror and skittered away from the group, vanishing behind the counter. He began making a phone call that Johnny suspected they weren't supposed to be able to hear.

 

Jimmy and Tenna giggled beside him and Edgar reached for Johnny's cup of Cherry Doom.

 

“Is that any good?”

 

Johnny shrugged and handed him the cup with what was left in it. “Yeah, here. I'm getting a bigger one before we leave.”

 

He filled up an extra large cup with Cherry Doom, while Jimmy bravely sampled the peanut.

 

“We should go,” Tenna said.

 

Johnny took a long sip of the sour cherry brain freeze in a cup and savored the strange biting aftertaste. “Yeah, okay.”

 

He glanced up at the cameras and waved, sweetly wiggling his fingers. As they exited the store, Johnny held the door for the others and then called to the man hiding under the counter.

 

“Have a nice night! Thanks for the food!” He stepped through the door himself, and then popped his head back in as something occurred to him. “Hey, you also should probably have locked these doors if you didn't want us to escape into the world to corrupt the innocent! Consider that for next time!”

 

As he crossed the parking lot and hopped into the van, he considered that maybe he didn't need to sing to enjoy himself.

 

 

 

 

Tenna strapped herself into the driver's seat. “Okay, my fruity souls of the damned, where to?”

 

“Just find us a place to sleep,” Devi said. “Today felt like three days.”

 

“I want to go home,” Johnny said, squeaking his straw against the plastic bubble lid on his Freezie.

 

“We're a little far for that,” Tenna said. “Tomorrow, maybe, if we get a good start.”

 

Jimmy whipped out his tablet and his fingernails clicked against the screen. “Looking for the closest shitty motel!”

 

“It doesn't have to be _shitty,”_ Devi said. “We're just not looking for golden toilets, that's all.”

 

Tenna looked at her in mock alarm. “We _aren't_?”

 

Devi rolled her eyes and shoved her.

 

“Huh,” Jimmy said and frowned at the screen. “Let me try again.”

 

Edgar leaned over his shoulder. “What's wrong with it?”

 

“It only showed me one, I think I typed it in wrong.”

 

Edgar smirked. “Did you actually type 'shitty'?”

 

“No!” Jimmy pulled the tablet against his chest defensively. “I just typed 'motel'. I'm looking, hang on.”

 

He fussed with the tablet for a few more minutes and the others slowly found his trouble more interesting than their stolen food.

 

“We are in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Jimmy finally said. “Everything I put in just gives me this one place.”

 

“What's the radius on it?” Johnny asked.

 

Jimmy clicked his lip ring against his teeth. “A hundred miles.”

 

Tenna twitched. “What? There should be dozens! Hundreds!”

 

“I know.”

 

Edgar quietly flipped the tiny switch on the camera around his neck and held his hand out to Jimmy. “Can I see that?”

 

Jimmy shook his head and shrugged. “Here, you try if you want.”

 

Edgar took the tablet and made sure the camera got a good look at the empty map with a single red pinpoint on it. Johnny leaned in next to him and zoomed the image in and out, but there was still only one motel listed for as far as the tablet could see.

 

Not completely convinced this wasn't the map having an issue, Edgar tried searching 'hotel', 'bed and breakfast', 'sleep', and 'bed'. Every term brought up the same single location.

 

Tenna looked him expectantly. “Well?”

 

“It's just this one place.” He handed the tablet to her. “It's seven miles away, and nothing else is _any_ miles away.”

 

She shook her head as she too poked at the screen and tried to expand the search range. “Soooo, I guess the question is: 'Do we go?'. I mean, is it more likely that the map thing is broken or that Nny's static head lady has stock in this motel?”

 

Everyone turned to Johnny, who shrank against Edgar a bit. “She doesn't tell me about her investments, I don't fucking know!”

 

“It's probably okay,” Tenna said. “It's gotta be the map, right? What would spooky head lady want with a motel?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I really just want to go home, but fine.”

 

Devi tilted her head. “O...kay?”

 

Tenna nodded as her fingers zipped across the screen. “Yeah, yeah, okay. It's a motel, so the worst we're gonna find is thin carpets and shit, not static hell” She handed the tablet to Devi. “Here, look. It's a themed place. They've got slot machines. Fun.”

 

“So a cheap casino hijacked the map to get our money?” Jimmy asked. “That makes sense.”

 

“Corporations are probably still slightly more evil than Nny's head voice,” Tenna said. “So we're protected by a layer of capitalism or whatever.”

 

Johnny sighed. “What's this place called?”

 

Devi blinked down at the screen and then offered the tablet back to Jimmy and the others as Tenna started the van. She'd pulled up their casino-styled logo featuring cherries behind '777'.

 

“Lucky Sevens.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of this territory should look familiar to those of you who read the original! You will also recognize where we are going next, I imagine. I've been looking forward to this stuff for a while. 
> 
> The first little scene is just something of a shoutout to the song I was sent the first time I wrote this story, “Chicken's Got a Kickstand.” It came with this helpful drawing, also: http://www.ladyyatexel.com/fanart/ChickensGotaKickstand.jpg
> 
> The song itself is on my website, should you want to listen to it. It's a good time. 
> 
> It's cool to get Johnny to suffer in a more concrete way this time around and wow that is one of the most unfortunate things I've ever typed. I do mean that, though. The last time, he was just kind of distant and weird all the time no matter what, and how his past affected him wasn't brought in enough for it to feel like it mattered, I think. Now we've got some concrete problems related to it. I hope it all spirals out of control satisfyingly for everyone! I'm nervous but excited about it!
> 
> I love being able to call Edgar Johnny's boyfriend as much as Edgar likes hearing it, I imagine. It's a liberating thing to type after all this time!
> 
> I wish I had been able to maintain the blog as much as I wanted to, but writing enough to have the buffer to be able to post these and then edit them every month is pretty much keeping me tethered to my word processor to the exclusion of everything else. Still, I hope what little does get posted is entertaining.
> 
> Of course Edgar's fake last name was an obvious choice, right? The rest of the names don't have any significance behind them. 
> 
> There are a lot of moments in this one that were references to the comics or to the first SWAN because I wanted to get them in here while I could, which I hope sounds appropriately ominous. We are definitely in 'the end' now, with only a few chapters left. I can't believe I'm at this point at all. I joked about rewriting a lot of this material when I first started doing this and now I'm doing it. Its the weirdest thing.
> 
> The convenience store bit is from original SWAN, of course. Though it ends differently both out of necessity and that I wanted to remove some associations I wasn't comfortable with anymore, I still think it's recognizable and holds to the spirit of the first one. Of course Nny selects Cherry Doom because he did in the first one, but he did so in the first one because that was the name of our JtHM slash group on Yahoo back in the day. The words still have a really strong association to a certain time period and content to me. Cherry Doom, Icy Ham, and Frosty Peanut were all Freezie flavors shown in the comic. Odds are good Nny got Cherry Doom then too.
> 
>  
> 
> The songs for this chapter are: 
> 
>  
> 
> The Homicides – Perks of Being Dead  
> (part of Propane Nightmares from a previous chapter)  
> Oh Land – Human  
> Editors – And End Has A Start (I've always considered the point we're now at the start of the 'end' of SWAN, so this was strategic song usage even back in the first version).  
> Shiny Toy Guns – Ghost Town  
> (hints of Echo from previous chapter)  
> Madonna – Frozen (two lines on the airplane radio)  
> The Homicides – Concrete Symphony  
> Halsey – Gasoline (Nny says a few lines of this in the van along with a few lines of 'Echo' and 'Leaving Tonight' from prior chapters)


	25. home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A run through number 777.

 

They pulled up to the Lucky 7's Motel at nearly three in the morning. It was one-story and considerably run down, but still clung desperately to the fancy casino motif it had advertised. The marquee with several blown out bulbs in front of the building announced vacancy, though it didn't need to. The lot out front was filled with potholes but not much else.

 

Jimmy looked out the windows in dismay. “I think I'd rather go for another hundred miles.”

 

Devi rolled her eyes as she left the van. “Baby. Why don't you call tattoo guy or piercing guy or whatever he is and see if he'll take you somewhere nicer?”

 

Jimmy muttered under his breath as he left the van and hauled his bag off the floor.

 

Inside, the attempt at the casino décor continued with several slot machines jangling in the center of the room and lights running back and forth across the lobby. Jimmy peered into one of the machines like he thought something might live inside while Edgar found even this obviously run down rendition of a casino overwhelming.

 

Tenna reserved the rooms at the front desk, explaining to the bored desk clerk that her friends would arrive later. She strolled back to the others who were all poking at the slot machines.

 

“We're good to go,” she announced.

 

“How many?” Jimmy asked while he watched the numbers flashing and spinning in front of him.

 

“Three,” Tenna answered, a little sheepish. “Will you be okay?”

 

He nodded and tried to smile. She patted his shoulder.

 

“So our rooms are on the lower level,” she said, waving them toward a small hallway in the corner of the lobby.

 

Devi looked around at the others. “Lower level?”

 

“This place is _barely_ one story,” Edgar said.

 

Tenna shrugged. “I guess the underground rooms are cheap?”

 

Jimmy's lip twisted in disgust, the mild allure of the slot machines gone. “The fuck kinda motel has underground rooms?”

 

“This lobby is weird,” Johnny said.

 

Tenna led them through the little corridor to the elevator that shouldn't have existed. “Weird how? The slot machines?”

 

“It just feels off.”

 

“Probably because there's fucking rooms under it,” Jimmy grumbled.

 

Johnny rubbed his arms as he glanced around at the flashing decor. “I guess.”

 

They piled into the elevator and Tenna pushed the only available button that wasn't the current floor, a 'B'.

 

The elevator clanged and creaked as it took them down and Edgar felt himself flinch with every sound. “Can I just – ?”

 

“Please don't,” Tenna said, holding a hand up toward him.

 

“No, seriously, only horror films have elevators like this.”

 

“Horror films and fucking underground motels,” Jimmy grumbled. “We're gonna get our skin taken off by some guy with a chainsaw or something.”

 

Edgar looked at the worn buttons and walls of the box they were all crammed into. “Yeah, there is at minimum one dead body at the bottom of the elevator shaft when it's like this. Or some kind of mutant test animal. With a tentacle face.”

 

“This is me not listening to either of you!” Tenna sang as she covered her ears.

 

“We could just go back up and stay in a normal place,” Jimmy said.

 

Devi smacked Jimmy's shoulder. “Will you drop it already? Do you want to sleep in the van?”

 

“No, fuck you. This is fucked up.”

 

“There was _nothing_ else on the map, you saw it,” Tenna said.

 

“That doesn't mean other places have stopped existing. Just that this place wanted money and we decided that was fine.”

 

Edgar flinched again as another loud bang echoed through the elevator. He glanced at Johnny and realized he was staring into the speaker on the ceiling. 

 

“Nny, you okay?” Checking on Johnny made him feel like he was helping, made the sounds less ominous.  _Pretend you're the least scared and fuck fear, right?_

 

Johnny tilted his head, staring up at the speaker like it had asked him a curious question. “I don't know.”

 

Devi poked at the lit up 'B' on the panel near the door. “This is taking a long ass time.”

 

“Yeeeaaah,” Tenna said. “This is a lot for one floor.”

 

Johnny hissed at the ceiling suddenly and backed into Edgar.

 

“Whoa, whoa, what's wrong?”

 

“Nothing!” Johnny snapped.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“It's fine.”

 

Finally, the elevator car groaned to a stop. The doors scraped and whined as they slid open and Devi leaned her head outside first, her arms across the doorway. “Looks normal, I guess,” she reported.

 

“They all look like that at first,” Edgar muttered.

 

Tenna hauled her bag onto her shoulder and stood behind Devi. “God, I'm glad I'm not staying with Mr. Sunshine tonight. Good luck with him, Nny.”

 

Johnny stayed close to Edgar, his gaze slowly panning over the ceiling of the elevator. “Yeah, I think I'll be fine.”

 

Tenna shrugged and they all followed Devi out into the hallway. The décor was worn and faded, but had once been red and beige, perhaps white. The red carpet had a flattened darker path in the center of it from decades of boots and suitcases. The lamps on the occasional decorative table sported yellowed shades and every other mounted wall light had burned out.

 

“We're in 130, 132, and... 12,” Tenna said, glancing between her card and the numbers on the doors in the halls.

 

“How are those even on the same floor, let alone near each other?” Johnny asked.

 

Tenna shook her head. “I asked her for three rooms beside each other, I don't know.”

 

They found the rooms at the end of the hall, 130 and 132 next to each other on one side of the corridor, and 12 directly across on the other.

 

“We get 12,” Johnny said, swiping the card from Tenna's hand and jamming it into the slot by the room 12. The lock clicked and the door swung in.

 

In every other motel room, Edgar would have seen some light coming in from the outside, even at night, thanks to streetlamps and plazas. Here, it was just more black.

 

The others unlocked their doors with the same mechanized bolt sounds and cautiously peered inside.

 

Tenna shifted her weight at the threshold of their room. “Nny, are you gonna be okay?”

 

Johnny blinked in surprise. “I'll be fine.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“Yeah, I just need to get some sleep and then get home.”

 

Devi tried to steer Tenna inside. “Come on, Ten, it's late. It's been a fuck of a day.”

 

Jimmy appeared back at his door. “It's fucking dark in here.”

 

“It's underground, asshole,” Devi snapped.

 

“I guess goodnight?” Tenna said as she looked over her shoulder. “See you guys in the morning?”

 

“Not that we'll be able to tell it's morning,” Jimmy said before closing his door.

 

Edgar heard Devi tell Tenna, “He'll be fine,” before they closed their door too.

 

Johnny took a last look around the hall

 

“Still okay?” Edgar asked.

 

“Something like that,” Johnny said.

 

He he turned back into the room and flicked on a light to begin inspecting it, but was met with a blast of light before being quickly plunged back into crushing darkness. Edgar grabbed him without even thinking.

 

“Fuck, are you okay?”

 

“I'm good, I'm good.” Edgar felt him nodding. “I think it just blew.”

 

“There's got to be another light,” Edgar said, feeling his way blind along the wall. His hand slipped into another doorway and he let go of Johnny. “Here, here we go.”

 

The bulb in the bathroom cast a dim light onto the rest of the room and the light fixture that had plummeted to the floor when Johnny flipped a switch.

 

“Well,” Johnny said, nearly giggling. “This is promising.” He strolled into the room, kicked the fallen fixture aside, and tossed his bag on a bed. He began poking around in every corner, picking up everything that wasn't bolted down and even some things that were. “Look at this,” he said as Edgar dug through his bag to find a change of clothes. “This remote is sealed in this big piece of plastic.”

 

“What?”

 

“Look, look!”

 

He held up a plastic chunk the size of Jimmy's tablet with the remote frozen in the center like an insect in amber. The buttons were accessible through carefully drilled holes.

 

“That is... incredible.”

 

“Right? Like who would steal just a remote?”

 

Edgar turned around to look at the television which was bolted close to the ceiling like the TVs he saw in hospital rooms on the drama channel. Up around it, all the cords had been sealed in some plastic tubes and a metal cage of sorts both supported the TV and made it impossible to get any kind of grip on it.

 

“It would be really hard to take TV with the remote,” Edgar said.

 

“Fuck, even this shitty painting is bolted down!” Johnny said, shaking the gaudy frame that hung above the bed's headboard. “I can promise you no one wants to steal this. No one wants this  _at all,_ stolen or not.” 

 

“Did you bring any paints? We could make it something people  _would_ want to steal.”

 

Johnny grinned and pressed a hand to his chest. “I'm flattered.”

 

“You're perfect,” Edgar teased.

 

“Stop that.”

 

“I mean it.”

 

“So do I.”

 

“Okay, okay.” Edgar sat on the edge of the bed and immediately felt springs, lumps, maybe something pointy. “I just think it's going to be a long night here. We could stand some fun or property damage.”

 

“Same thing, really.”

 

Edgar found the t-shirt he wanted in his bag and pulled his stringy costume shirt off over his head. It left him with the torn black long-sleeved shirt he and Devi had decided to layer on to keep him a little warmer than the gauzy costume shirt could do on its own. He gathered what he needed while Johnny looked through the drawers of the bedside table.

 

“I'm going to get a shower, okay?”

 

Johnny nodded. “Sure.”

 

“You'll be okay?”

 

“I'm fine, I don't need constant supervision.”

 

“Sorry. Please don't hold the worrying against me too much.”

 

“It's okay.”

 

Even though he trusted Johnny, or maybe just really wanted to, he left the bathroom door slightly ajar on the off-chance he'd hear if something bad happened.

 

The water was too cool, there was hardly any pressure, and the tiny bottles of soap the motel had provided were not labeled in any way. If he wasn't already eager to get this done quickly to make sure Johnny wasn't alone, the shower itself would have encouraged him.

 

He heard the door open while his face was buried in the weak spray and his heart dropped into his stomach. “Nny?”

 

“I'm okay,” Johnny said. “Just getting some stuff.”

 

“Um, stuff like what?”

 

“Like a toothbrush, calm the fuck down. I'm  _fine_ .”

 

“Okay, sorry.”

 

There was silence but for the water thudding against the slightly discolored bathtub floor for a few moments and Edgar thought Johnny had walked away, but then he suddenly spoke again.

 

“Thanks for being worried, I guess. Sorry.”

 

“Oh, no, you don't have to – it's okay. That's just kind of what I do.”

 

Johnny laughed. “I know. Still, thanks. I'll, uh, let you get back to business.”

 

Before he knew what he was saying, Edgar blurted out, “You can stay.”

 

“Uh...”

 

“Shit, sorry.” He closed his eyes against the water and tried to not to sound like a naked weirdo asking someone to hang out with him. “I wasn't trying to be creepy, I just... like talking to you.”

 

“Lucky for you, I'm here all week.”

 

“I... hope it's much longer than that.”

 

Johnny let out this soft embarrassed laugh. He did this any time Edgar tipped the romantic sentiment scale even a little. Edgar probably shouldn't have enjoyed hearing it as much as he did.

 

“I think that's... probably likely.”

 

“Good.”

 

Edgar heard water in the sink and actually felt the already spotty water pressure in the shower dip.

 

“I'm just gonna brush my teeth if that's okay with you.”

 

“I'd somewhat prefer it in general, but if you can save me some water, that'd be great. This just feels like someone emptying a water bottle on my head now.”

 

As he tested the soap bottles, his mind wandered, but in that lightning quick way that jumps from one slightly related topic to the next until it becomes lengthy and awkward to explain aloud. Brushing teeth, bathrooms, common things one does in bathrooms, things he was doing, things Johnny was doing, things Johnny does not do...

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

“No,” Johnny said.

 

“Oh.”

 

“I wush joking, jeesh” Johnny said, clearly mid-brushing. “Ash whaever you wan.”

 

“This is going to sound really weird. I can explain where this came from if you want, but I just thought that we've lived in the same house for almost two years or something, and I have never seen you shave your face or even look like you need to. Meanwhile, I'm standing here thinking I'm going to have to do it _again_ when I did it yesterday and I was just wondering about it.”

 

“Ha.”

 

“What?”

 

He heard the sink again, the water pressure sagged, then returned, and when Johnny's voice came back, it was clear. “That was indeed a weird question.”

 

“And?”

 

“And you haven't seen it because I don't.”

 

“Shave?”

 

“Or grow anything  _to_ shave.”

 

“Oh. Wow.” Questions crowded to the front of his mind and though they all burned even more than the original question, none of them seemed like things he should actually ask.

 

“I'm not sure it's 'wow'. Pretty sure it's hormone shit. Not that it matters. I think I'd look terrible with shit on my face anyway, so it saves me some hassle.”

 

“I don't think you  _can_ look terrible, but okay.”

 

“God, what is with you today?” Johnny laughed. “Laying that shit on a bit thick, aren't you?”

 

“Maybe. Do you mind?”

 

“Not exactly, I don't think, I just don't know what you want me to do with it.”

 

“I don't know either, I guess.” He'd washed his whole body with what was probably shampoo and a desire for a heavy blanket crept in and overrode much of the novelty he found in talking to Johnny like this. “I'm gonna get out.”

 

“Okay, hang on.”

 

He stepped out when Johnny closed the door behind him and was met with his reflections staring back at him. The oldest one, the gory one, was rarely able to mimic all of Edgar's expressions, but now he looked sick in addition to dead. No one else would have seen it, probably not even Johnny, but Edgar saw the faces so often, was so used to them, that if something looked even a little bit off he noticed it. When he tried to check it against his own expression though, the difference between them vanished and gory Edgar mimicked current Edgar as he always did.

 

When Edgar emerged from the bathroom, Johnny was wearing a giant black t-shirt that Edgar suspected was actually his. He sat cross-legged on the bed leafing through a book.

 

“Hey, I'm human now,” Edgar said. “Is that my shirt?”

 

“Look,” Johnny said, holding the book up, “I think someone tried to summon Pepito's dad with this Bible.”

 

“That... isn't how that works, I don't think.”

 

“It might when you carve this on it.” He flipped the book around to reveal a pentagram scratched into the brown faux leather cover.

 

“Oh. Yeah, I guess that would do it. Though, is he even still around? Did Pepito ever tell us what happened to actual Satan?”

 

“Not specifically.”

 

“I worry about that a little.”

 

“Eh, let Pepito worry about it.”

 

“What if he's out there somewhere?”

 

“What, you think Satan's after you?”

 

“No, I guess not. It just concerns me that the actual devil might just be out there, _loose,_ or maybe locked up and angry, and we know his kid.”

 

Johnny shrugged one shoulder cheerfully and leafed through the book. Edgar watched Johnny moving and talking and breathing like everything was normal and he worried about that too. “Are you, uh, doing okay?”

 

Johnny sighed. “I don't know. I'm trying to pretend to be okay as hard as possible. How am I doing?”

 

“Great,” Edgar said. He smiled gently and sat down next to Johnny. “That sounds exhausting, though. You don't have to keep doing it.”

 

“It kind of _is_ exhausting. I just don't know what I'm gonna – I don't know who I am without this. I thought I knew, but now I'm not sure.”

 

“You mean without singing?”

 

He folded his hands over the book in his lap. “Without any of this. Without singing, without the costumes and the makeup and everything. I keep thinking that if I can never sing again, then we've made all the people see us who ever will. And then I think that maybe you guys could do it without me, and maybe that fucks me up even more.”

 

“We're not going to do it without you.”

 

“So you're okay just being limited by me?”

 

“It's been a while since I felt like something about you _limited_ me.”

 

Johnny bit his lip and looked up from the book in his lap. “Do you ever think about why?”

 

“Why what?”

 

“Why nothing about me is difficult for you.”

 

“I don't quite – ”

 

He was overpowered by a loud and vigorous knock at the door.

 

Johnny rolled his eyes and smiled at Edgar. It was cute and relatively free of hideous damage. Maybe he _would_ be okay. Edgar relaxed muscles he hadn't realized were tense as Johnny went to answer the door.

 

“What do you want, Jimmy?” he called out as he undid the excessive number of locks they'd been provided with.

 

No one answered him, but he opened the door anyway. He gasped and Edgar caught himself doing the same when there was someone they didn't know standing outside the door. It was a kid, short and pale, in a large black hoodie.

 

“I'm trying to get home,” the kid said. “Can you help?”

 

Johnny stood at the door, frozen, his only movement the tightening of his grip on the door.

 

Edgar stood up as the kid in the hall repeated her question.

 

“I'm trying to get home. Can you help?”

 

“No,” Edgar said. The sound was almost alien to him. Everything he thought he knew about himself would have included helping lost children, but everything inside him twisted up and tried to reject that this child even existed.

 

As Edgar got behind Johnny, he saw what the problem might be. The kid's eyes were black. Not just dark brown, and not just the iris, but black void from corner to corner like the contacts Johnny had wanted them to buy for performances.

 

Edgar placed his hand over Johnny's on the door handle and tried to push the door closed, but either it or Johnny refused to budge.

 

“Nny?”

 

“I'm trying to get home,” the kid said again. “Will you let me in?”

 

Johnny stared at the child and took half a step back into Edgar. Softly, nearly whispering, Johnny sang the string of notes from the static woman even as Edgar tried to shake him into silence.

 

“Johnny, no! Stop, stop!”

 

The child smiled, almost laughed, revealing a mouth full of just as much black nothing as its eyes. “Now, now, that's not quite it,” she scolded, and echoed the string of notes back with slight shift in tone and tempo and ending with, rather than generic 'oh's, lyrics: _“Now we are coming home.”_

 

Johnny screeched when he heard the words and clutched at his head. Edgar tried in vain to get the door to close while pulling Johnny away from it.

 

Giggling, the child sang the little bit of the song again. “Now we are coming home!” She, or it, took a step closer and grinned. “You _will_ help. You will!”

 

Suddenly, every fear and every tension dropped from Johnny's body and he whipped his knife from his pocket, pointing it at the child. “No,” he said.

 

“Holy shit.” Edgar pulled back on him, but Johnny twisted away from him.

 

“I won't,” Johnny said. “I know what you want, and I won't do it. Not again. I've met things like you before.”

 

The child snarled at him, stepping closer to the blade. “Let me in!”

 

“No.”

 

“You  _will!_ It doesn't matter what you say, you have to! It's just you!”

 

_“No!”_ Johnny slammed the door and bolted it so quickly that Edgar hardly had time to react. 

 

Johnny turned and looked at him, calm, quiet, mildly curious. Edgar couldn't point to one thing that said it, exactly, but it was hiding in little things: Johnny's breathing, his posture, some minuscule part of his expression, all of it just slightly off, just not quite right. Not his Johnny. 

 

“Nny?”

 

Johnny blinked at him, shook his head, and all the tiny hints that he had been anyone else vanished. He squeezed his eyes shut and his shoulders sagged. “Shit.”

 

Edgar's feet unfroze from the floor and he took a step forward to hold on to Johnny in case he collapsed again. “It's okay, it's okay. What happened? Was that her?”

 

“Almost,” Johnny said. “But not really.”

 

“Nny, it was a kid.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “It wasn't real. It wasn't human. Didn't you hear it? It wanted to be invited in. Like a vampire.”

 

“What did it want? You told it you weren't going to do something again.”

 

“What?”

 

“You said you knew what it wanted, but you wouldn't do it again.”

 

“If I knew then, I don't now. That guy is so fucking broken. I remember the sounds, but not what anything means.”

 

“Was it the first one?”

 

“Mostly.” Johnny took a few steadying breaths. “How long was that?”

 

“Just a minute or so.”

 

He blinked in surprise. “Oh. So that was real time.”

 

They were locked inside an underground motel room with a supernatural creature standing outside the door. Edgar had never had claustrophobia, but he considered that he was about to develop it.

 

“You came out of it so quick. I just said your name.”

 

“I don't know why it was different this time.”

 

“As long as you're okay.”

 

Johnny laughed bitterly. “Yeah. ' _Okay._ '”

 

“Do you want to sit down?”

 

“I think so?”

 

Edgar steered Johnny over to the bed where Johnny's knees gave up much sooner than just 'I think so' had made Edgar think they would.

 

“Whoa, whoa, you okay?”

 

“It's good, it's good. Having the other ones come out like that just kinda makes me feel like a Slinky. And this whole place makes me brain hurt the same way that kid did.”

 

“You said the kid was 'almost' the static woman.”

 

“It's … I knew it so much better when I was him. But it's like it _used_ to be her or it would have been her but we were talking to it ten years ago except it's... now. Now I don't know what it is. An echo or something.”

 

“Is she close? Do you still not know what she wants?”

 

“She's really close. The black thing is close too. It's moving, it's... _boiling._ She's excited. Like she thinks she's won something.”

 

“Great.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What now?”

 

Johnny laughed a little. “I was going to ask you that.”

 

“Why would I know?”

 

“I mean what do you _want_ to do? Not what you think we _should_ do.”

 

“I don't know, I'm processing this second by second. What are we considering?”

 

Johnny looked apprehensively at the door. “Well, mostly it's, 'How long do we stay barricaded behind this door while that thing sits out there?' and 'Is killing it technically morally wrong?'”

 

“Holy shit, please don't say things like that.”

 

“I just told you: It's not human.”

 

“Yeah, but neither are kittens and – ”

 

“That _kitten_ just threatened me and fucked up my head.”

 

Edgar paused. “I... guess.”

 

“It's okay, you don't have to do it.”

 

“That's not really my issue.”

 

“Okay. Well, maybe we can outlast it. Maybe we just sit and, in the morning, it'll be asleep on the floor or back in its coffin or something and we can make a run for it.”

 

“I like that idea a lot more.”

 

Johnny looked at him, smiled at him, then suddenly – _happily_ – hugged him. “We're okay. I don't actually _want_ to kill anything.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Edgar held onto him, suddenly fighting a fear that he was about to lose him.

 

 

 

 

 

An odd thing, that he should feel so fond of Edgar on the heels of a supernatural weirdness while they were locked in a sunless basement, but maybe that was appropriate given everything else that had happened since they met.

 

It really all had started to get weirder with Edgar, hadn't it?

 

“You want to try underground cable?” Maybe they could distract themselves from the thing outside the door, from the distant buzz that was lingering in Johnny's skull.

 

Edgar laughed at him. “TV, really?

 

“What else? Maybe it's all in inverted colors down here.”

 

“You sure you're okay?”

 

“Look, I could really use the mindless distraction, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

It took them several seconds to find the proper button order to even get the television on. After that, they had to switch it from some sort of auxiliary mode and into cable mode. Then it was a matter of picking out which unlabeled button did what. Edgar fought with the giant encased remote for only a few channels, and then suddenly wielded it like he knew it as well as the controls at home.

 

“Mmm, Edgar the TV whisperer.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

Johnny grinned. Edgar was perfect and Johnny adored him and that was so deeply _weird_ and things had _definitely_ started going haywire on all fronts once they'd met Edgar.

 

As Edgar scrolled through dull channels that were not inverted or from some kind of opposite day culture, a single channel screamed at Johnny as it flickered by. He swatted at Edgar's shoulder and tugged on his sleeve as Edgar clicked onward.

 

“Wait, wait, wait, go back.”

 

Edgar frowned. “What, you haven't seen that episode of 'Black Shape in Black Void' before?”

 

“Just _go_.”

 

Johnny slowly rose from the bed and drew closer to the television screen. He stared up at it like he was straining to hear music in a department store.

 

“It's a blank channel,” Edgar said.

 

“No. It isn't. Something's wrong with this one.”

 

“Nny, there's something wrong with all of them. Underground cable is not a thing.”

 

“No, no, there's something there. That's not a blank screen.” Johnny looked between Edgar and the TV, afraid to look away fro the latter lest it bite him if he wasn't watching it. He held his hand out toward and Edgar and flapped his fingers. “Gimme that.”

 

Edgar shook his head and surrendered the remote without a fuss. “You know, there's a movie about a girl coming out of televisions...”

 

“Yeah, in a rustic cabin,” Johnny said as he fiddled with the buttons on the remote. “We're in a basement.”

 

_“Oh. So_ much better.”

 

“Baby.”

 

“We just had a creepy child at the door who brought your brain to bad places. If  _anything,_ including Pepito, comes out of that screen, I am sleeping in Devi and Tenna's room.”

 

“Pfft. Suit yourself.” He aimed the remote at the television like it was a weapon. “Okay, here we go.”

 

The word 'ZOOM' appeared in the corner of the screen in a neon blue, though for several seconds, nothing seemed to change. Then, the black they'd been seeing revealed itself to be just a small piece of a much larger image that was definitely moving. Johnny hit the volume button and cranked it up as high as it was go just as some kind of shape began to take form on the screen. A sickening purr from the broken speakers sank into him like it could stain his bone marrow with sounds.

 

Edgar stood up and joined Johnny, squinting up at the screen. “Is this some kind of medical show?”

 

“I don't... think so.” The next things he saw were teeth, bright spots against the churning black behind the screen. Or maybe they were claws? Then tentacles, then mouths.

 

At least a dozen eyes turned to look at him. Not just toward the camera, toward the screen. Down. Toward a person holding a remote on the floor below a window into horror.

 

Johnny froze, though he begged his muscles not to. The purring was replaced with a screeching whine and scraping against glass and concrete.

 

_'...we are coming home...'_

 

They'd been brought here. There were no other motels on the map not because of desperate capitalism but because this is where they had to go. Where Johnny had to go. They'd been able to convince themselves that it was okay to come here because this thing needed them to. The voice in the static and the words on the blog and the girl in the hall and everything in his head were all here behind the television screen. 

 

“Nny?” Edgar probably said something beyond Johnny's name, but after that, there was nothing but static. There were hands on his shoulders but everything else was blacking out. He could see black, feel black,  _hear_ black. The world fizzed around him as the bolted down painting rattled against the wall. One long screeching scream rang from the television and at the same moment the remaining lights in the room exploded in tiny bursts of light and smoke. A crack ripped through the walls, surged between his feet and shot up the wall where it broke the television in half in an explosion that sent Johnny staggering backwards into the black. And, he thought distantly, into Edgar. 

 

_'… we are coming home...'_

 

 

 

 

Johnny sat up with a start and found himself in bed with Edgar's arms around his waist. 

 

_Oh shitfuckdamn, how long have I been out?_

 

“Edgar!”

 

“Shit, shit, hang on, let me – Nny, stop, calm down!”

 

“No, no, no!” Johnny wrenched himself from Edgar's grip and flew to his feet. “Whatever it is, it's not important, we have to get out of here. Now. I don't know how long I've been out, I don't know how close it is.”

 

“What are you – ?” There was a brief pause and then the mattress squeaked. “Okay, okay. What's going on?”

 

Johnny found his things on the floor, retrieved his jeans, and pulled his knife and his lighter from the pockets.

 

“What are you doing?” Edgar called into the dark.

 

Johnny sparked the lighter to life and clutched the knife into his palm so tightly it ached. “Grab anything you _literally_ can't live without, we're leaving now.”

 

Edgar shook his head, bewildered. “I have you, I'm good. But what about the thing outside?”

 

“This is why I have a knife.”

 

“Oh my god, Nny --”

 

Johnny stumbled to the door, the back of his head filling with the black, with memories that didn't belong to him, with static and  _songs._

 

 

“ _Can you hear them calling?”_

 

 

He tore his way through the locks and flung the door open, only to find there was nothing there when he opened it into the hallway. Where the hallway had been lit poorly before, however, it was now as black as their room.

 

Johnny threw himself across the hall and pounded on the doors. “Jimmy! Jimmy, get up, get up! We have to go! Devi! Ten! Come on!”

 

Edgar joined him, though he obviously still did not completely know what was going on. “Guys, come on! Get up!” Edgar's voice glitched in Johnny's ears as static, the voices, the memories, the black, and the  _songs_ filled his head instead. 

 

The doors swung open in front of him. Johnny grabbed Jimmy's arm and hauled him into the hall. Devi and Tenna leaned out from the door next to him.

 

Jimmy stood in thin sweatpants and one sock, his tattoos on display as he blinked at Johnny in the flickering orange from the lighter. “Nny? What the hell?”

 

“Do you know what fucking time it is?” Devi hissed.

 

“We have to leave. Now.” He pulled Jimmy toward the others. “Ten, get the keys, and let's  _go_ . I don't know how deep we are, but we can't take the elevator. It isn't safe. We need to run.”

 

The others looked at each other, eyebrows raised, mouths half-open. He begged them again. “Please!”

 

A low humming buzzed through the floor and into Johnny's head. The others startled when they felt it.

 

“ _Can you hear them calling?”_

 

Devi gazed up at the ceiling where a crack that had spiraled around the hall was illuminated by Johnny's lighter. “What the fuck happened out here?”

 

“It's because it's fucking underground,” Jimmy said. “I fucking told you this underground motel shit was a bad idea.”

 

_It's here. It's in this house. Not a motel._

 

“ _Now we are coming home!”_

 

_This wasn't always a motel, this was me, this was_ _ home _ _._

 

“Get the fucking keys!” Johnny yelled. “We're going! Now!”

 

Tenna wandered back into the room in her squeaky fuzzy slippers and produced the keys, but far too slowly. “Nny, this is crazy shit, okay? Here, take 'em. I'll get dressed and then – ”

 

“We don't have time for that, you are going to _die_. The thing in my head isn't only in my head, this is _it_ and it is _here,_ we have to get the fuck _out!”_

 

“Guys, please,” Edgar pleaded. “He's not making this up. I saw it on our television, it cracked our room in half, it – ”

 

“Okay, let's go,” Jimmy said suddenly.

 

Johnny sighed in relief and shoved Jimmy in front of him as he began charging down the hall before Jimmy's limbs were even moving properly. Devi and Tenna ran after them, bewildered, scared. They only had Johnny's lighter to light the way and it had trouble staying lit while being carried at top speed. Their footsteps thundered over thinning motel carpet, punctuated by Tenna's squeaky novelty slippers and nearly everyone tripping over shifting cracks and random decorative tables in the endless black.

 

Devi slammed the glowing elevator button nearly with her whole body when they reached it, but Johnny pulled her away from it. “We don't have time to wait for that! We can't get stuck in there!”

 

She tried to protest, but made no words, just baffled sounds.

 

They fumbled through the dark for the door to the stairwell until Johnny grasped the handle. He pushed and strained against the door, but it wouldn't budge.

 

“ _Can you hear them calling?  
Oh, they're calling out tonight”_

 

The black crept into the back of his head, into the corners of his vision. It whispered song on top of song, words hissing and cooing and everything in his head pulling him toward the very thing he was certain they were running from.

 

“ _Now the skies are burning_

_oh, they burn so bright”_

 

Jimmy and Devi stood over him to shove the door open and the three of them fell forward into the stairwell where a howling wind echoed and swirled in every direction. A distant light shone from a few flights up. Tenna and Edgar rushed to join them.

 

“ _We shiver as we step into_

_the cold, cold night”_

 

“Where is that coming from?!” Tenna shouted against the wind.

 

“ _and we're running we are running now!”_

 

_“_ Outside!” Johnny yelled back, though he didn't actually know. “That's a good sign! Let's go!”

 

It lived here. It was the black and it was  _in_ the black and it was the blogging woman and it was static and the fucking thing spoke in  _song_ . These were the fucking  _notes._ It had been singing this since the start.

 

“ _I hear them calling me_

_I hear them whispering_

_they're singing:_

_'Now we are coming home'”_

 

“There's fucking stairs going  _down_ !” Jimmy yelled as they scrambled up the steps. “How far down does this go?!”

 

“Don't look  _down!”_ Edgar called to him. “We're not going that way!”

 

“ _I hear them calling me_

_I hear them howling_

_singing:_

_'Now we are coming home!'”_

 

Their voices were fuzzy against the song which grew louder the higher Johnny climbed.

 

“ _Oh...”_

 

The notes from the static, the notes from the kid, the notes he'd been trying to sing. They'd been garbled in the static, they'd – 

 

A roar erupted from the depths of the stairwell and the walls shook around them. Johnny braced himself against the railing to hold his footing.

 

“This is fucking  _crazy_ !” Tenna shouted. “What the hell is that?!”

 

Johnny pulled himself back up. “It's the thing in my head, just keep going!”

 

They whirled around two more flights of stairs to the door with the tiny lit window. Johnny peered through it and found the light was not from outside, but from a room lit with several naked light bulbs.

 

He pushed his whole weight into the door and the clang echoed around him.    


The room was not a hallway, not a luxury suite, not in any way a motel. The floors walls and ceiling were industrial and comfort-less. Old stained wood patched with sheet metal, or maybe the opposite. Surreal swirling images on the walls ( _and you know every stroke)_. Everything covered in flickering blue light.

 

“ _See the shadows dancing  
Oh, they dance for us tonight”_

 

The others were close behind him. Devi ran in and slammed the door. She took in the room slowly, panting.

 

“A dead end. Fuck.”

 

Johnny shook his head. “No, no, there's a way out of here, just let me think.”

 

“ _And as I’m tossing and I’m turning  
Oh, they come alive”_

Jimmy looked out through the window in the thick steel door. “I think there's something down there, holy shit, holy shit.”

 

“ _We shiver as we step into the cold, cold night”_

 

Tenna squeaked as she shifted her weight nervously. “What does it want? What's going on?! I don't wanna die!”

 

Devi grabbed onto her arm. “We're not dying. We're okay.”

 

The black howled for him, pulled on every muscle.  _Coming home._ It wanted Johnny, it wanted him  _down there_ , it wanted – He flinched against its attempt to force the memories of the others to the front.

  
“ _Then we’re running, we are running now”_  
  


The others would know the layout of the house.

 

“ _I hear them calling me”_

 

Channeling his old selves would bring the black right to them and tear him from his own memory. If he brought them out, if he fucking sang anything, it would know exactly where they were.

 

“ _I hear them whispering”_

 

But he'd also know the way out. They'd also have a chance.

 

 

“ _They’re singing: “Now we are coming home””_

  


The floor shifted underneath them, toppling them into each other. The creaking and straining of old mangled wood echoed around them, followed by a sound like talons on glass. 

 

“Nny, what does it  _want?_ ” Edgar looked at him, trying to conceal his panic.

  


“ _Oh… oh…”_

  


The notes called him again, pulled at him, tried to coax his voice from his throat. _It wants me dead, but first it wants me to sing._

 

“It wants _me_ , okay? It's after the guys in my head, it's after me, and you guys are just _here_. I don't know what happens if you get stuck in it, I don't know anything!”  


 

_But the other two do._

  


_ No. I can do this myself. _

  


“ _Can you hear them? I hear them calling me, oh...”_

  


The notes again.

 

Devi hauled the door back open, and the scraping glass roar grew louder. “No sense just fucking standing here, then! We need to keep going up!”

  


“ _Can you hear them? I hear them calling me, oh…”_

  


Again.

  


“No!” Johnny shouted. “Not that way! We can go up from in here.”  
  


He poked at the other people in his head like a wasp nest. Just enough to get what he wanted, but far enough away to run. 

  


_Run._

  


The memory played in his head like a movie, like an instructional video that he followed on auto-pilot. He ran to the back of the room and pushed on the largest sheet of rusted metal drilled to the wall. It scraped and groaned as it swung inward toward a long inclined hallway lit with the same flickering blue as the room around them.  
  
  
  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering  
I hear them calling me, we’re coming home”_

  


  
  
“Here, come on! Up this way!”  
  


The others hesitated, even Edgar.  
  
  


_“_ Guys, please! It's _up_ , isn't it?”  
  
  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering  
I hear them calling me, we’re coming home”_  
  


Edgar nodded and followed Johnny in and then he was followed very quickly by the others. They stumbled up the incline and through more rooms as the sounds behind them pushed them forward. Every room they hit had an obvious door, an easy way out, no need for old selves to come out and help.

  
This was good. They were going to be fine. They just had to keep moving, keep following the tiny glimpses Johnny could steal from his other selves when the solution wasn't obvious. He wouldn't have to trade himself in hopes that the other minds would want to save his friends once he let them out. 

  
He stepped to one side to let Edgar in beside him. Edgar pushed open the latest door and they stepped into a room that smelled stale and metallic. On the far wall, above a grate that had turned red with rust, stood a bladed machine.  


_No, no, that is not going to be okay, shit shit shit._  


_Bursts of blood and snapping bone and the tiny crunch of plastic lenses and_ Johnny tried to pull Edgar back a second too late. 

  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering”_

  


“Oh,” Edgar's voice trembled as the others crashed into the room behind him. Johnny took hold of him arm and tried to pull him away, but Edgar didn't even react to him.  
  
Edgar's shoulders shook. “I'm not used to seeing it from this angle.”  
  


“The fuck is this?” Jimmy said. “Is there a way through here or not?”  
  


“Edgar, come on, come on” Johnny urged, tugging on his arm. “I'm sorry. We can't do this here, you can't do this.”  
  
  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering”_

  


The song began to loop like it was stuck.

 

_Like it's waiting for an answer._   
  


“What's going on?” Tenna cried, her slippers squeaking as she crashed into Devi.  
  
  


“This is the wrong way!” Johnny said. “Get back, get back!” He tried to push the others back the way they'd come while he pulled Edgar out, but they were more interested in panicked anger.  
  
  


“I thought you knew where you were going!” Devi shouted.  
  
  


“I've never been here, just like you!” Johnny yelled back.  _Is that lying?_   
  
  


“Then why are we listening to you?!”  
  
  
  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering”_

  
  
  
  
“I don't know!”  
  


This was not the real answer, or even a proper one, but Edgar was not doing well and even as they were all literally running for their lives, all Johnny wanted to do was fix him. He tried to shake him, tried to help while also just making sure they were alive.  
  


“Edgar, come on, I'm serious! That's not you, you know that!”  
  


Edgar glanced at Johnny, still shaking. He wiped tears away from cheeks already stained with whatever filth had been in the vents and nodded. Finally he agreed to be moved, backing up against Johnny and the others, with his eyes again locked on the rusted machine.  
  


_How is it even still be here, this doesn't make sense...  
  
_

_And I shouldn't know that.  
  
_

“Just back up, back up!” Johnny insisted, pushing the others back through the door.  
  


As they passed through, the house lurched around them. Tenna grabbed Devi's arm and yelped. Edgar was jolted out of his trance, but was clearly still mentally shaken. Jimmy's brave face had started weakening several rooms ago and was quickly deteriorating.  
  


Much like the house.  
  


The rhythm of the song pounded louder, and stronger.  
  
  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering”_

_  
_ Over and over, the same line, just more and more and more.  


  
From the machine room roared a metallic scrape and Johnny and the others watched as pieces of the machine fell to the stained floor and then shattered through its old wooden boards. From the holes they left behind, something black began to seep through.  


  
“Oh my god,” Devi said. “Is that the –?”  


  
“Is it playing fucking  _music_ ?” Jimmy cried.  


  
The song had stopped being in his head. He hadn't noticed. Pounding, pounding, pounding and Tenna was crying, and Devi was bleeding, and Jimmy looked sick, and  _Edgar_ and 

  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering”_

_   
  
_ “Guys, I am really sorry,” Johnny said. “I don't think I have a choice anymore.”  


  
  
Edgar looked at him, eyes wide, breathing hard, covered in smudges of dirt and blood and rust, with scratches and tears still etching rows in the filth on his skin. “What are you doing?”

 

Johnny closed his eyes, tried not to feel anything. The others had tried to do the same once, he should have practice. “I'm gonna get us out of here.”  
  
  


“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering”_

  


 

Devi's eyes darted frantically around the room. “What are you – ? Do you know the way?”

 

“No. But I know a guy.”

 

Edgar leaped at him in a panic. “No! No, not in here!”

 

Johnny turned to Edgar at the same moment that Edgar tried to grab his arms. The house groaned and screamed around them and in this rapidly decaying and blackening world, Johnny threw his arms around Edgar's neck, nearly toppling both of them. He pressed his cheek against Edgar's and squeezed him for a moment.

 

“Nny, what --”

 

Maybe he'd never see Edgar again, or maybe he would but wouldn't know who he was. Maybe they'd all die, or maybe after this Edgar would wish he had. Maybe Edgar would leave this so traumatized that he'd never want to see Johnny again. Maybe if they just stood here long enough the thing would consume them and take away the need for the choice.

 

He spoke close to Edgar's ear, and was just audible over the panic and screeching from the wooden floors. “I love you.”

 

“I – ”

 

“Don't.” Johnny let go of him and held a hand up to Edgar's lips. “I can't get us out of here if you say that.”

 

“What do you think you're doing?!” Tenna screamed. “You're going to get us killed!”

 

He looked at her, his breathing matching the heartbeat of the house. “No, I'm getting us _out._ ”

 

The house creaked and trembled under their feet, sending the others grabbing at each other for support. Johnny took a long breath, steady on his feet, already closer to home, as everyone else shook around him. They looked up at him, desperate and afraid.

 

“Trust me,” he said.

 

He didn't give them a chance to think about it.

 

The house wanted the guys in his head, and he needed the guys in his head to escape. The fucking house wanted him to sing, he'd sing.  
  
He sung the notes the child at the door at had given him, the correct ones this time, the ones the static had been trying to coax out of him. He sung them more easily than he breathed, like they'd always been in him. They rose from his throat as though being pulled out. He'd had control when he started, but the last few notes were torn from his throat and the song exploded around them, finally screeching back to life.

 

 

“ _I hear them calling me, I hear them whispering  
  
They’re singing: “Now we are coming home”  
(I hear them calling me, I hear them howling)  
Singing: “Now we are coming home””_  
  
  


The memory of being in this house flooded Johnny's senses. He could no longer hear anything but songs and screaming, and he didn't know which of them were happening _now_. 

 

Not that it mattered.  
  
  
They'd come through this room thinking it was empty, but there was a trick and he'd done it so often (“ _Never_!”) that it was nothing to kick the loose board and bring a rusted ladder scraping and squealing from the ceiling. He hopped onto it like always (“ _Never_!”), and looked back at the others. The others he was meant to take with him (“ _Yes_!”).

 

“This way,” he said. “I don't normally lead people _out_ of here, but I seem to be in some danger too, so consider this a lucky day.”  
  
  
They regarded him in terror but must have known they had no other options as they all scrambled to the ladder to follow him. Once the squeaky slippers made it up, the trip through the house was so easy. Under this, over this, a latch, a switch, stairs, crawlspace. He flowed through it just like he ( _never)_ did everyday.

 

“Nny?”

 

The voice made things inside him  _scream_ . Unpleasant. 

  
“We're almost there,” Johnny said. “Just keep going. It will be difficult to go back for you if you're just parts.”

 

Somewhere behind him, one of them was crying. All for the better that it was back there. He didn't deal with his  _own_ tears well.  
  
  
The song blasting through the shaky wood shifted, made new words, new poison. 

 

 

“ _I'm gonna burn my house down_ _  
__Into an ugly black_ _  
__I'm gonna run away now_ _  
__And never look back”_

 

_Burn it, huh?  
_

_  
_ The screaming metal, wood, and blackness behind them moved faster now. It recognized him, wanted him, knew exactly where he was.  


  
  
_Burning it is, then. I've made you angry again, haven't I?_

 

The others were talking, or screaming, or crying, or all three, but the voices were hard to separate.

 

They were also slowing him down.

 

“How far is it?” one of them called out.

 

“It's not exactly easy to measure.”

 

“Oh my god,” another one cried. “I want to go home.”

 

“Fuck, fuck!”

 

He turned and found one of them clutching his foot, which was now bleeding onto the floor.

 

Squeaky slippers grabbed at him. “Shit, Jimmy, are you okay?”

 

“We can't stop here,” he told them.

 

“Just hang on!” the other girl snapped. “We know! We just need to get him – ”

 

As they leaned over the bleeding one and tied his single sock around his bleeding foot, the far corner of the room splintered apart. Long tongues, tentacles, teeth shot through the hole, screeching for them.

 

“Oh my god, oh my god! Come on!” Slippers panicked and shoved Bleeding toward the others as new pieces of his wall monster pierced the floor like spears.

 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

 

“Just keep running!”

 

They raced up the last flight of stairs and he pushed them into the final room. As they turned the corner, the bottom of the stairs was swallowed into the black.

 

He ran to a grate in the final room. “This is it,” he said. “Through here, there's a trap door at the end. And then it's the first floor.”  


“Oh, god, tight spaces.”

 

“This is insane!”

  
  
“We've gone this far, come on!”

 

“What if he's – ”

 

“He's not!”

  
  
“What if we die in there?! Isn't there somewhere else?”

 

“We're going to die going backwards! What other options do you see?!”

 

“I'm going, come on!”

 

Once he got one of them in, he assumed the others would follow.

  
  
“See? That's gotta be him! It's okay!”

  
  
He knew they were talking about him _(me),_ but they also weren't talking about _him(you)_ **.**

  
  
The shaft was brief, as ventilation shafts go, and at the end they found the trap door by the light creeping in around it.

 

He had help pushing it up and they found themselves in a brightly lit lobby full of garish flickering lights, the door sliding a large carpet across of the floor.

  
  
A shocked scream erupted from a nearby desk and carried over the jangling slot machines.

  
  
“What in the world? How did you get down there?”

 

Johnny ( _yes)_ pulled the others up, their touches pulling at him, clawing at him, stealing from him, and they scrambled to the door, one of them stopping briefly to implore the women at the desk to leave.

 

“You guys have to get out of here!”

  
  
“Tenna, leave them, they're not worth it!”

 

“Oh my god!”

 

He had no way of knowing it wouldn't just extinguish, but Johnny sparked up the lighter and sent it skidding down the shaft toward the rotting wood and consuming black.

 

  
_ “I'm gonna burn my house down _ _  
_ _ Into an ugly black _ _  
_ _ I'm gonna run away now _ _  
_ _ And never look back” _

 

 

“Have a nice night!” he chirped to the people at the desks, though the presence of the desks scraped at his skull. Wrong. Out of place. He ran with the others to the van that he somehow ( _ absolutely) _ knew would be sitting in the lot. He knew where to sit and who was driving and what it all felt like. As much as the idea repelled him, the reality of falling against the person beside him ( _!) _ felt like all he'd ever wanted. 

 

The van spun backward along loose gravel and a tire squealed as it sped out of the lot and onto the road.

 

“How long will it follow us?!”

 

“Just drive!”

 

“What if it never stops?! What if we run out of gas?!”

 

“Just  _ drive _ !”

 

The songs continued in his head. He'd talked to that woman, and he'd tried so hard to appease the needs of the thing that chased them. He couldn't really burn them, could he?

 

The songs still pulled at him.

 

“ _You can't wake up, this is not a dream_

_you're part of a machine, you are not a human being”_

 

He knew them. 

 

“ _Now we are coming home!”_

 

_No._

 

He was certain of that and he was certain of it three times over. 

 

Shame about that basement, though. It had taken a long time to get it set up the way he liked.

 

He gazed out the rear window and watched the house sink, swell like it was taking a breath, and then heave violently as it exploded into tentacles and flame. The air filled with a screaming roar and something black lurched from the wreckage of the building, shooting out against the sky, blotting out stars and streetlights behind it.

 

The voices in the van erupted around him.

 

“Oh, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!”

 

“Don't look, just drive!”

 

“How the fuck did it _explode_?!”

 

“It's still chasing us!”

 

Arms tightened around himas he watched and felt for the static and the black and the voice.  


  
They swerved through a stop sign, nearly hitting a man on late night bike ride and sending him into a ditch.

 

“Oh my god!”

 

“Fuck him, keep driving!”

 

“Ohmygod, this is _insane_!”

 

“Edgar, we might need you to drive, Tenna's flipping out!”

 

“I can't, Nny is – ”

 

_ Edgar(!). _

 

There was some kind of argument, more panicked voices, round and round, over and over. He knew this. This was old and this hadn't happened yet.

 

“Where are we going?” he asked, though no one seemed to hear him.

 

“ _and we're running we are running now!”_

 

“Oh my god, slow down! I am not escaping Hell just to die wrapped around a telephone pole!”

 

“I'm sorry, do you think the approaching Void obeys the fucking speed limit?!”

 

“How did it get so fast?!”

 

“Just be glad it wasn't this fast inside!”

 

The van barreled onward with no regard for where they were or where they were going until they took a tight turn onto a highway exit and began soaring by the few other cars on the road.

 

The scream continued behind them as Johnny watched the thing that had lived in his house black out the world in its wake. Released from the confines of the building it moved faster, hungrier. It reached for him, it called for him. It was _furious_ with him.

 

Did it really make sense to try to outrun it? Wasn't it just as futile as everything else he was doing?

 

Beside him, he heard his name. “Nny?”

 

Johnny looked at him, so much processing at once.

 

“Are you okay? Is it still you? Are you in there?” Just glasses and concern.

 

There was yelling from up front again. “The fuck did I just hear?! Is it still not actually Nny?!”

 

“Don't listen to them, drive!”

 

Johnny had three sets of memories for this face, with the clearest being this face cracked in half before becoming not much of a face at all anymore. So maybe that hadn't happened yet? Could you have a memory of the future?

 

The van screeched along the road with the black roar following closely behind. The front of the van surged with panicked voices, but beside Johnny was still just glasses and concern. Calm, patient.

 

“Nny, listen, look at me.” At the same time, he took Johnny's hand.

 

“Ah! What are you doing?!” Johnny pulled his hand away as though it had burned.

 

“Nny, it's me, it's Edgar. Please, come on, you have to shake this off. Just like before, okay?”

 

This was Edgar( _!_ ). Right. He remembered this one. He'd been nice. That whole thing had been unfortunate. Until it wasn't.

  
  
“Oh, you _already_ died, didn't you?” Johnny said. “Terribly sorry, I'm a little disoriented just now.”

 

Edgar's eyes widened just slightly, and then the surprise flickered into something more serious. “Yes. But that wasn't me. It was someone else. It happened a long time ago. It's you and me now. Here, look.” He held out his arm and showed Johnny his wrist. “Yours too, remember?”

 

They carried the same scar, though it hadn't been from the same thing and it hadn't happened yet or to him. Johnny knew this mark. This had panicked him, reset him, had nearly woken him up.

 

From the front, someone screamed at him. “Nny! You have to turn the crazy off! We can't out-drive it forever!”

 

_Devi!_ He hadn't seen her before. A shame that she ended up here too. If she'd let him freeze things for them when he'd wanted, this wouldn't be happening now. It always went bad, always.

 

“I – maybe this is just how it will be,” he said. “It wasn't my intention.”

 

Ahead of him again, different, frantic. “No! Come on, come on!” This was _Jimmy (reads books about shit that can help)._ He was the repulsive thing who came to his house claiming to be just like him _. Didn't I already kill him?_

 

Reflective signs whizzed by the windows as Tenna ( _drives like a maniac, hates stop signs, loves everything else, but she's the best choice)_ screamed incoherently into the windshield.

 

“Hey, please.” Edgar again. Edgar ( _perfect)_ with the glasses and the concern and the sincerity with the hands. This time just on Johnny's arm.

 

“What are you doing? Stop that. What is wrong with you? We're going to die and you're grabbing at my skin?” _It's okay._

 

“Sorry, I'm trying to get you to see. Look at this, look.” Edgar held a notebook in front of him and turned on the dim reading light in the roof behind him. The book was in Johnny's writing but he had no ( _every)_ recollection of having written it. 

 

Songs. Conversations. 

  
  
“Oh.” 

 

“You know these,” Edgar insisted. “You made these, we wrote this stuff. This is  _you_ right now. Please, come on, please. You have to remember doing this.”

  


Jimmy shoved a small screen at him. “Look, look! There's pictures!”

  


There  _were_ pictures. Jimmy  _(so much better this time)_ flipped through them frantically, only pausing to emphasize that they were Johnny. And they were him but he was wrong. He was smiling, he was laughing, he was  _singing_ ( _singing, singing, yes, yes),_ he was too young. 

  


_“_ Are you seriously just showing him pictures?! Come on, we're gonna fucking die!”

  


“Do you have a better idea!?”

  


“I don't know, “I love Belarus”?! Do something!”

  


His head hurt. His skull was full of too many people, too many feelings, too much. He'd tried to silence this noise, tried to exist outside of this. 

  


“Edgar, why isn't it working?!” Tenna cried.

  


“I don't know! I'm trying! Should I kiss him like last time?!”

  


Johnny pulled away from him. “You what?”

  


Devi screamed in frustration, anger, something. “That's not going to work! The first one isn't in love with you!” She unbuckled her seat belt and staggered out of her chair toward the back with Johnny  _(and Edgar!)._

  


“Devi, what are you doing? Sit down, holy shit!”

  


She snapped her fingers in Johnny's face. “Look at me, you little shit! Do you know what you're doing right now? Do you understand what a fucking night I'm having right now?”

  


Johnny touched his face, felt for the blood from the mirror, the static in his bones. “I could understand how it could come off as a bad thing.”

  


“Oh, you  _understand_ , do you??”

  


Edgar(!) again. “Devi, what are you doing?!”

  


“If we can't make him remember, we're gonna shut him down!”

  


“What?!”

  


She snapped at him again. His face twisted is disgust but something deep inside him, some flaw in his machinery, kept him from lashing out.

  


“Do you know what I've been doing lately?” she asked. “I've been staying in. A lot.”

  


Jimmy leaned closer. “What is she talking about?”

  


“And you know why?” Devi continued. “Because every time we try to do something _nice_ , things get increasingly _bad_.”

  


“Devi!” Edgar shouted.

  


She brushed him off, stared into Johnny's face. “And you know what's worse than hiding from things that scare you? Do you? I'll fucking tell you – it's having good things pass you by because you're hiding in idiot terror from _shit like you!”_

  


Her voice echoed in his head like it had when she was on the phone  _(“When?”)_ and he was trying to get her to understand but she never understood that part of things and the _time before that with the phone his skull was shattering all around him and the thing in the wall was out and coming as he was bleeding and –_

  


_No, this already (hasn't) happened!_

  


_The black roar stopped and he fell backwards. Hands at his neck, his back, but not to strangle or stab._

  


_Because Edgar wouldn't do that._

  


_He woke briefly in the morning. Or a morning. The radio was on, and a man with an even strong voice was calmly explaining that there had been a gas main explosion at a motel in the middle of nowhere. The police and firefighters were investigating to rule out foul play and so far reported a dozen deaths._

  


“He's lying,”  _Johnny said._

  


“Nny?!”  _Edgar. Hello, Edgar. Edgar is good._

  


“There aren't any police there anymore,” _Johnny said. The colors of world blurred around him._ “There's nothing there anymore and there will never be anything ever again.”

  


_Things went black once again, as Edgar's panicked voice echoed into the depths of wherever he was._

  


“Johnny, --- awake, come on! ---- home!”

  


_Home had a strange ring to it. What was that, exactly? Just a place. A hollow shell where you hide with all your stuff until you die or you grow tired of it._

  


_Or the thing in the wall forces you out of it._

  


“ _behind your face  
behind your skin  
behind your bones  
look within”_

  


_Which hadn't exactly happened this time, or the last time. Last time, he'd been dying and while he died reality had turned a bit soft. This time... this time there were songs? And people. There were people last time, too, but not those people. Not people he was trying to save._

  


_Saving people. He'd done that a few times, here and there, but for small people who deserved it, like Squee, and not for strange(ly important) people who looked a lot like people who should be long dead._

  


“ _are you like them  
can you surmise  
are you in this world  
to tell lies”_

  


_This was all supposed to have been shut off. There was supposed to be no feeling. Yet, he'd felt something buried deep in the striations of memory that made him keep going, keep ensuring that they followed him safely._

  


_Something was wrong with him. Even now, he still needed to be fixed._

  


_“I think there's a flaw in my code”_

  


_Songs everywhere. Songs interrupting each other and weaving into each other and stopping and going and everywhere. They used to be just voices and very probably his own. Now there was singing, instrumentals, feelings, images. He'd always liked a good soundtrack, he supposed, though this seemed like a strange way for his new madness to manifest. Maybe this was how being numb felt. All your feelings and experiences packaged neatly in little tunes you could ascribe to something on the outside. Convenient. Disposable. Someone else._

  


“ _I hear them calling me”_

  


_It was still out there. It had lost him, but it was still looking._

  


_Looking._

  


“ _Lies_

_Lies_

_Lies_

_Lies...”_

  


_A familiar feeling, though one he'd rarely ever resolved. Sounds pounded into his head, voices he knew, voices he didn't, voices that weren't voices._

  


_Wasn't he dead yet? He'd done that so many times. Two or three, at least. Satan was an okay guy, all things considered, but God had been disappointing. Even in Heaven he'd been given the tour by a demon._

  


“ _have you not seen  
and have you heard  
and do you not know  
about this world?”_

  


_(We're dead, we died, why is it still happening?)_

  


_He woke up once and Edgar(!) was there. He hadn't killed him, somehow? He'd killed Edgar(!!) just as sure as he'd had a hundred Freezies with him. And he was there and he was saying he wanted to try again. Demons for Hell and demons for Heaven discussed where they'd go like furniture in a room._

  


“ _behind your face  
behind your bones  
behind your skin  
are you in this world  
to tell lies?”_

  


_He could agree to go and do all the shit all over again and no, no, no, he'd rather not deal with the shit, but he'd go otherwise._

  


“ _Lies  
lies  
lies  
lies...”_

  


_Unfortunately, there was no separating his brain from the shit.  
_ _  
  
The Doughboys could have told him that. So could Nail Bunny. But they weren't there anymore. No one was there. Nothing but cold sidewalk and a bright blue sky. Birds singing. Children playing. Idyllic bullshit.  
_

_He was a child and he knew nothing and he did not know how good he had it._  


_Nothing in his head but songs. Nothing in his stomach at all.  
  
_

_But when he'd stolen and he'd eaten and he'd found unlocked garages, he knew who he was._

  


“ _Cry ‘blasphemy’, cry ‘fuck you’_

_But don’t bother to change_

_Because it’s all a work in progress, dear_

_And we’re all bound to be a little strange.”_

  


_And he knew her and he knew the song even though he'd never heard it before and she could see and she'd been stealing and eating too and the world made more sense and felt smaller. She did not remember, she didn't know him, but with her there, he knew who he was._

  


_She had a friend, which meant so did he. The friend was fun and she could do things they couldn't but he made sure he was still important because of what he felt and what he knew. He didn't know her song, but it knew him from somewhere far away, just barely a touch._

  


“ _She's got technicolor shoes_ _  
Untied, laces trailing  
But that's okay, I'm with the band, baby  
I'll follow you anyway.”_

  


_And with two of them following and two of them believing and two of them stealing and eating and hiding and creating, he knew who he was._

  


“ _When I was twelve_

_I sold my soul_

_to Lucifer_

_for a sack of coal_

_'cause I never been hot enough_

_but I aim to start.”_

  


_Ran into him, found him on the floor, knew this songs insides better than he knew its outsides. When he spoke this one listened, repeated, adored. Did not remember, but believed with everything it was. He'd follow anywhere, do anything, be anyone, just to get closer._

  


_Closer wasn't allowed, but it didn't matter. With the three of them following, believing and stealing and eating and hiding and creating and bleeding, he knew who he was._

  


“ _Wish I could say I knew anything_

_or that I used to be someone_

_but right now I don't know who I am_

_or if I've been him all along”_

  


_And this one was new but the song wasn't. The song used to taste like fear and sounded like Freezies but it arrived and it belonged and it was welcome and it was terrifying for all that he remembered and all that he knew and it followed and it believed and it stole and it ate and it hid and it created and it bled and he was lost in the song and he did not know who he was._

  


_It was beautiful and it was perfect and it had been there for so long he didn't know how it had ever gone missing even though it no longer tasted like fear and still sounded like Freezies and it tore at him inside and cried and stayed even when it should not have and then –_

  


_Then with all four of them following, believing, stealing, eating, hiding, creating, bleeding and singing he knew who he was._

  


_They had nothing and they had everything and for the idea of new and more and real they chanced the world vanishing around them just as they had vanished within it and the doughboys and the rabbits and the voices were piling in on him but he had the songs and he knew who he was._

  


_He missed them. They'd been gone so long now. Dead how many times? Just as many as he, maybe. The world was not worth it without them, it was not worth staying in a place where they were not with him. He knew who he was and he could wish it away. He knew who he was and could stop everything._

  


_Instead of going anywhere, the world_ just _blurred_ its _way_ into _view_ , and the world looked a lot like Edgar's ceiling. Johnny made some kind of noise, though he barely knew he was the one making it. Songs. Still songs and voices everywhere.

 

“Nny? Oh, god, Nny, can you hear me?”

 

Johnny blinked, hard and deliberate, separating Edgar's voice from the other noise. “Yeah.”

 

Edgar leaned in close and Johnny felt his weight on the mattress. _Mattress. This is Edgar's bed._ “Okay, can you see me?”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“Do you know who I am?”

 

“Edgar.” _He's still here. Still alive._

 

“Good.” He pulled Johnny's face up toward him and pressed their foreheads together with more force than was probably necessary. “I love you too. More than anything else. And I was fucking terrified I wasn't going to get to say it.”

 

“Oh,” Johnny replied weakly. “I did say that, didn't I?”

 

_ 'I don't know of anyone that I love, or of anyone that loves me.' Isn't that what he'd said? He'd definitely meant that when he said it.  _

 

“And meant it, I hope.”

 

_'There's no love there, Edgar, not for anyone else. If it's a real thing, it is something they feel only for themselves. They cry because someone has exposed their truth. How's your Freezie?' He'd also said that._

 

He nodded and tried to swallow, but his throat was so dry he only made some strangled clicking sounds. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

 

_'It's not a real thing. Visible people made it up to sell cards. No one actually feels that way, they're just trained to think they're supposed to.' He'd said that too._

 

“God, I'm so glad you're awake. I'll get you some water. I'll be right back, okay?”

 

Johnny nodded and Edgar zipped out the door and around the corner. He returned seconds ( _never, years)_ later with a mug full of water from the bathroom.

 

“Here, I – oh, do you need help sitting up?”

 

“I –” Johnny's muscles still worked, he definitely wasn't paralyzed, but he felt like beef jerky ( _death, bones)_. He winced and nodded, as much as he hated needing the help.

 

Edgar set the water on the bedside table and helped pull Johnny up and forward, stacking pillows behind him. Johnny's weight leaned limply into Edgar's shoulder like a doll ( _corpse, noodle)_. Edgar set him back as though he were one made of particularly thin porcelain ( _bone, flour)_ and offered the mug again.

 

“ _I took a little journey to the unknown  
And I come back changed, I can feel it in my bones”_

 

Johnny drank, though his muscles objected to even having to hold a mug. The songs and the others still followed him as his throat expanded, renewed, refreshed. He didn't know how much he'd needed the water until he had some.

 

“How do you feel?” Edgar asked.

 

“ _I fucked with the forces that our eyes can't see  
Now the darkness got a hold on me  
Holy darkness got a hold on me”_

 

“Fucked up.”

 

Edgar smiled at him. “At least you still feel good enough to phrase it that way.” He took the mug from Johnny and replaced it with his hand, his fingers lacing between Johnny's. “I've been so worried.”

 

“How long has it been?”

 

 

“ _How long, baby, have I been away?_ _  
__Oh, it feels like ages though you say it's only days”_

 

 

Edgar broke eye contact. “A few days.” _(Years. Years.)_

 

“Oh, fuck.”

 

“Yeah.” Edgar squeezed his hand.

 

“Is everyone okay?” _(No one_ ~~ _Devi_~~ _. Edgar.)_

 

“Yeah.” He touched Johnny's cheek with his free hand and it flooded Johnny's blood with such a strange fondness _(horror, fear)._ It would have been a more startling gesture at any other time, but now, even though it felt like lifetimes since he'd seen this Edgar, any Edgar, it was almost welcome. “Because of you.”

 

“ _There ain't language for the things I've seen, yeah  
Yeah, the truth is stranger than my own worst dreams”_

 

“It was … it wasn't me.”

 

“ _The truth is stranger than all my dreams  
Holy darkness got a hold on me”_

 

“That was the most of him I've ever seen. But it was _you_ who wanted to save us. It was _you_ who made sure we got out. The person who led us out was confused about who we were and why he was doing what he was doing because of _you_. He knew the way, but it was you driving it.”

 

“ _I have seen what the darkness does  
(Say goodbye to who I was)”_

 

Johnny looked away. “I wasn't just going to let us all die. Just don't pretend it wasn't partly selfish.”

 

“We still appreciate it.”

 

“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “I only saw things from inside. Way inside. I tried to keep hold of things, to keep him from … How was he?”

 

“ _I ain't never been away so long  
(Don't look back, them days are gone)”_

 

“A little scary.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“It's okay. I was more afraid of the thing in the house than him. He might have just been scary because he wasn't you. Or we might be okay just because he was confused, I don't know. But he wasn't threatening us.”

 

“ _Follow me into the endless night  
(I can bring your fears to life)”_

 

“I don't remember.”

 

“Speaking of remembering...”

 

“Oh, no, oh shit, the room.” Johnny's hands rushed to Edgar's arms and then fluttered off when he  _(we)_ quickly thought better of it. “I didn't mean to do that, I didn't realize it until we got there what it was and –“ 

 

Edgar flinched. “Not that, actually. I meant Devi.”

 

“ _Show me yours and I'll show you mine  
(Meet me in the woods tonight)”_

 

“Devi?”

 

“She remembered. I don't know how much, exactly, and I don't know when, but she had enough to know what to say.”

 

“Oh, no. Shit. Shit, I wanted – I wanted to prevent that.” The songs howled like wind, rushed in and scattered him like leaves. _La-Da-Da-Da-Da..._ But there was still Edgar.

 

“I know, but I think it saved us. She knew something that shut you down. It was how we lost the black thing.”

 

“Shit.”

 

“She called the other day screaming that she could see another face in the mirror.”

 

“ _Yeah, the truth is stranger than my own worst dreams  
Holy darkness got a hold on me”_

 

“Shit, shit, shit.”

 

“It's okay, it's okay. She's got Tenna, she's doing fine. I just thought I should tell you. She told me about the mirror, but she was still calling to find out how you were. They all called, they've all been over.”

 

“ _I have seen what the darkness does  
(Say goodbye to who I was)”_

 

“All just sitting here watching me sleep?”

 

“For the times when I couldn't, yeah. I was absolutely sure you were going to wake up and just start screaming the second I got into the shower. I had to have someone here with you.”

 

Johnny frowned. “Fuck.”

 

“ _I ain't never been away so long  
(Don't look back, them days are gone)”_

 

“Sorry, I – ”

 

“Jesus, Edgar, don't apologize for trying to take care of me. It's fine.”

 

He laughed, thankfully. “There is a very thin line between taking care of you and offending you, I'm sure you're aware.”

 

“Yeah, but the line might get a bit blurry with you.”

 

“ _Follow me into the endless night  
(I can bring your fears to life)”_

 

Edgar smiled proudly. Kind of adorable. “I'll take note of that.”

 

“I'm glad you exist,” Johnny told him. The words came suddenly, badly timed. “At all. Still.”

 

“Oh. Uh, thanks.”

 

“ _Show me yours and I'll show you mine  
(Meet me in the woods tonight)”_

 

“I thought I might not see you again when we were down there. Or that if I did, I wouldn't know who you were.”

 

“If I hadn't already been running for my life, I would have assumed the situation was bad the moment you said you loved me. That might have been the scariest thing that happened.”

 

Johnny frowned. “Sorry? You'll recall I warned you about me not being good at this romantic shit. I'm also still an asshole.”

 

“No, no, it's okay, that came out sounding worse than it was. I'm not complaining, it's just how you are. And you're not an asshole. Or I just don't care that you are. I haven't figured out which it is yet. Still. It's fine. I'm so happy you said so.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, so, what do you need?”

 

 

 

Edgar brought him water, and macaroni, and everything cherry-flavored he could find in the basement. Over the course of several days, a pile of CDs stacked up by Edgar's bed, there was a dedicated garbage bag for cherry juice boxes, and Johnny's sketchbook was tucked under a pillow for quick access. Edgar made sure Johnny ate a certain number of times a day, served as entertaining company, helped haul Johnny around, and caught him while his muscles still had the fortitude of wet noodles.

 

They'd all come out of the experience a little worse for the wear, with cuts and bruises and most definitely some mental trauma, but the process of drifting between two other lifetimes full of memories to save his current life had drained Johnny of everything. He had no fever, no cough, but his body still behaved as though he had an aggressive flu. One walk to the next room exhausted him to the point of heavy breathing and he was frequently dizzy. He hated to even think it, let alone express it in any way, but stuck like this he  _needed_ Edgar.

 

One outburst of feeling had broken the dam in Edgar's vocabulary and now 'love' flooded everything. Johnny had never heard 'I love you' sincerely directed at him before waking up after the incident with the house, and now he heard it every night at the absolutely minimum. It wasn't a problem – he'd meant it when he said it, even if it was said in a state of terror – it was just overwhelming and strange to be confronted with it so often. It was stranger still to respond, and he didn't know why that was. Problems with the concept of romance? Concerns about Edgar's inevitable desires making this all an exercise in extreme foolishness? Doubts about the reasons for Edgar being here?

 

Or was he actually just an asshole _(“I'm the villain in this story!”)_ like he'd been saying all along?

 

Maybe Edgar would tone it down once the novelty of being able to say it wore off. Maybe Johnny was an asshole for thinking that.

 

They watched a lot of television while Johnny tried to regain any of his prior energy, weight, comfort, or mental health. Johnny's favorite infomercial (people scraping paint off of furniture with notebook paper!) mingled with episodes of Mysterious Mysteries (Aliens! Disappearances! Badly reenacted murder!) that crossed with movies Johnny usually slept through. He'd wanted to stay awake for most of them, but just didn't have the energy.

 

While he drifted in and out of sleep, Johnny saw Edgar react to media as though he were alone. The movies were all fun genres like sci-fi, or bad horror, or strange psychological adventures, but even those sometimes featured the softer sweeter gunk that apparently stuck to Edgar like gum on hot pavement. The scenes were difficult to parse, and that could have been that Johnny was drifting in and out of sleep or that he just didn't do human heart stuff properly, but they clearly spoke to Edgar in his native sappy tongue. One partner in a relationship dying deeply upset him, people getting together made him smile, and he just slightly tightened his arms around Johnny anytime anyone on screen got married.

 

_I am going to ruin all this for you. What the fuck are you still so set on me for?_

 

_Maybe the same reason I can't make myself let go of you._

 

As much as he tried not to dwell on them, his uncomfortable suspicions about Edgar still lingered and were only enforced by how devoted _(pathetic, obsessed)_ Edgar had been since Johnny woke up. Edgar was perfect and made for Johnny to the detriment of what should have been Edgar's actual wants.

 

No matter how true it was, maybe 'I love you' had been a bad idea.

 

And then, a day or two later, Edgar apparently had the same thought. It came out of nowhere while they sat on the bed, though Edgar had clearly been turning it over in his head for a while.

 

“It's not supposed to go this way, is it?” Edgar asked in the middle of a commercial break. He stared at the screen, though he didn't seem to see what was on it.

 

Johnny looked up from his sketchbook where he'd been trying to force himself to make just one decent drawing. “What way?”

 

“I've had to start thinking backwards about everything lately. Now if I see a really good thing on TV, I assume it's probably _not_ the way things are for real. So... people don't usually find one person when they're in highschool and then never anyone else, huh?”

 

“I don't know. I'm not a visible person either. But we're not like the people on TV,” Johnny said. “There's only us. Everyone else has like seven billion options.”

 

Edgar frowned. “I'm not sure that makes it feel better.”

 

“What's wrong, exactly?”

 

He shrugged and looked down at his hands in his lap. “Just... the future, I guess. I think about it all the time now. According to how things look like they should go for normal people, I'm supposed to not love you eventually. I'm supposed to try this with a bunch of people before I pick one.”

 

This would have been a good time to segue somehow into 'Hey, do you ever wonder where those feelings come from?', but instead, Johnny found himself arguing against Edgar's attempt to accept this particular version of reality. “We can't map things out with television. Things aren't either TV or Not-TV. I'm not sure it's a spectrum, but there's a gray area, at least.”

 

“I know, I guess. And I don't feel like it's even _possible_ for me to stop being in love with you. I can't imagine it ever stopping or fading away. I have a hard time remembering when I _wasn't_ in love with you and that was a lot more of my life. I'm just scared of losing it. I'm worried about what happens now.”

 

“It's the same for me.” A scary ( _wrong, messy_ ) thing to admit. Scarier to feel.

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny looked back to his sketchbook. He'd been filling it with teeth and claws until he could no longer hold a pencil for the better part of three days. “I know I had years when you weren't here and it was just me and Devi, Tenna, and Jimmy and I wasn't even remembering enough to know you were missing. But now I can't even remember what it was like to _not_ remember you. And I don't have any plans for remembering you to be unpleasant in the future.”

 

“Do you think this would have happened without us remembering?”

 

“Yeah.” He didn't hesitate. Also scary ( _wrong, messy)._

 

Edgar smiled. “Really?”

 

“Was remembering another me why you liked me after we met? Because you remembered going to the 24/7 with a wacko a lifetime ago?”

 

“No, I guess not. I went looking for you because I thought something was missing, but meeting you was different, I think.”

 

“And I thought – ” Johnny stopped himself. The words had slipped by his filter, but he decided maybe they were supposed to and let the rest of the thought come. “I thought this was made up,” he said softly. “I was so sure that since I couldn't summon a love song feeling for the three people I knew that it had been orchestrated by companies who could make money from it. I thought people who wrote love songs and sold cards and flowers and candy had just tricked everyone into thinking this was something they felt, and needed, and was real. Like some kind of drug in the water supply that the four of us were all immune to. Like we were also immune to the zombie virus that went around when I was thirteen. And then you were there. And all I remembered was being the empty person that took you to the 24/7. All this junk I felt at you wasn't because of what I remembered. You did this shit on your own.”

 

A smug grin slid across Edgar's face. “I can't say I'm sorry about it.”

 

Johnny laughed as he continued in his sketchbook. Swirls and teeth in endless black. It dominated all of his memory and thus also his hands. “You shouldn't be. I just, uh, considered myself superior in some way that I'd avoided all that sort of stuff. Certainly better than all the visible people. And then, after a while, it was like 'Hey, look, I'm better than Jimmy and Tenna, too! They drank the water and now they're love zombies!' Though I would hesitate to put a 'love' label on anything Jimmy feels. Either way, you had to go and steal pool keys for me and then I was not better then them anymore. The guys in my head screamed at me about it – they still kinda have feelings about it – and I still wanted this not to happen, but you had to be fucking charming or something, I don't know. I still sometimes can't believe what I'm doing.”

 

“Wow, I am a terrible person to inflict all this upon you.” Edgar deadpanned, eyebrows low. “How could I?”

 

“Yeah, my identity crisis is entirely your fault and you should feel really bad about it.”

 

“I'll help you have as many of those as you want because I'm not planning to leave.”

 

“Neither am I. So don't worry about the implications of TV. We're better than TV.”

 

“Is this going to be just like being better than love zombies? Hilariously proven wrong in a dramatic reveal?”

 

“No. This is fact.”

 

 

 

 

He wasn't ready to see other people so much as willing. Jimmy showed up at the house first and his relief upon seeing Johnny visibly washed through him in a wave.

 

“Shit, you're really okay.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Yeah.

 

“I know, I mean, he told us, I just – it helps to really see.”

 

“Ta-da,” Johnny said, waving his hands.

 

“I – I don't know everything that happened back there, but thanks for saving me too.”

 

“What?”

 

“I didn't think I was gonna get out. I don't think the other guys liked me very much and I thought he wanted to leave me there.”

 

“Maybe the one. But we were getting out because _I_ wanted to. So of course you were coming too.”

 

“He wanted to leave when I cut my foot, and I kept thinking 'I'm gonna die because I'm not Edgar.'”

 

“You cut your foot?”

 

Jimmy's eyes welled up with tears. “You don't even remember it?”

 

“Sorry,” Johnny said. “But I don't remember anything outside my head after I did what the house wanted. It's not just you.”

 

“It's okay,” Jimmy sniffed. “Just – thanks for getting me out too.”

 

“Leaving you there wasn't an option, but you're welcome.”

 

Jimmy sputtered some kind of thanks, and abruptly left the room. Judging by the sound, he stopped to have a small conversation with Edgar and then left the house in the middle of whatever he was saying. Edgar came back up after he was gone and poked his head in the room.

 

“Hey, what did you say to him?” Edgar asked.

 

“I was gonna ask you that. Why?”

 

“He came downstairs crying and just wanted to hug me a lot.”

 

Johnny shrugged.

 

“Okay then. Devi said she's coming over, can you handle it?” Edgar asked.

 

“Yeah, sure.”

 

“You alright?”

 

He glanced around the bed and laughed at himself. “I just feel like I'm some sort of royal asshole. 'Yes, yes, I'll see the peasants now. Send them in.'”

 

“Wow. And will your majesty be requiring anything for lunch when the peasants leave?”

 

Johnny laughed. “Fuck off.”

 

“Grilled cheese it is.”

 

 

 

 

Tenna and Devi arrived together, though Tenna was unusually quiet and hid downstairs. She talked to Edgar while Devi came upstairs to visit Johnny.

 

“Sorry about your head,” Johnny said to Devi when she sat next to him on the bed.

 

“It's not – no, it probably _is_ your fault, but you weren't trying to. So it's fine.”

 

He looked at his hands, at healing scrapes and scuffs, and picked at his equally mangled nail polish. “How's the mirror?”

 

She closed her eyes. “Mostly just weird. It's not bloody like you two.”

 

“Jimmy will be bloody.” The memories in his head supplied vivid images of the first Jimmy's death as though he needed to see sources for his own statements.

 

“I figured.”

 

“What did it?” Johnny asked.

 

“I don't know,” Devi said, shrugging. “It was slow. I kept getting these little flashes of deja vu or disorientation and I was ignoring them. But then there was a moment when I realized I'd been remembering real things and not dreams or something and I knew I could fix the problem.”

 

“Right.” Problem. Johnny was the problem.

 

“I'm glad you're okay. And that you're you. I don't know whether to hug you or punch you in the face, but I'm glad.”

 

“I'm alive, at least. I'm not totally sure I'm _me_ , but I'm here.”

 

She shoved his shoulder. “We'd miss you if you weren't, asshole.”

 

“Me or here?”

 

“Either.”

 

Tenna never came upstairs.

 

 

Johnny's strength returned as the days passed. He no longer felt the need to sleep through everything just as Edgar was no longer absolutely required for daily functioning. According to Edgar, Johnny also looked healthier, though Johnny saw no difference when he saw himself in the mirror. Physically, he was apparently doing great.

 

Mentally, however, there were some snags.

 

He felt the others with him more often, felt himself laced into them, experienced their feedback on almost everything. He experienced several feelings at once, some of them similar, some of them completely opposed. His own feelings were strongest, but the others rang out inside him, resonated with everything he felt, and reminded him that he was not the only one living in his own skull.

 

He hadn't lost himself inside the others, but they'd merged with him a bit. He still felt the same, still liked the same things, still loved Edgar, but with the others so closely blended in he was left wondering if he was still the same person who'd walked into that house.

 

 

“ _And I come back changed, I can feel it in my bones”_

  


Johnny mentioned it while playing a video game, mindlessly chopping down every living thing on the world map while Edgar watched beside him.  
  


“Okay, wow,” Edgar said Johnny casually mentioned the constant input from the others. “Thanks for telling me, at least. Do you think this is something we should worry about long term? Are you okay?”  
  


“That's kind of the weird part,” Johnny answered, happy to have killing monsters as a distraction. “Because mostly, yeah, I'm okay. I feel less invaded now.”  
  


“You made it sound a bit like your feelings were a democracy, so...”

 

“It's not that. They just feel less enthusiastic to break me since they're kinda… here already.”  
  


“Oh.”  
  


“It doesn't feel dangerous, just different. We're okay. I'm just kinda wondering what I can do now.”  
  


“I don't know how we could undo it, I – ”  
  


“No, actually, I meant – I meant that  I miss singing.”

 

The amount of sad of Edgar's face was almost alarming in how quickly it drooped all his features. “I'm so sorry.”

 

“Me too,” Johnny said, trying to joke.

 

“Do you think it'd be different now?”

 

“I don't know. I'm scared to risk it, but I also really want to.” He looked down at the controller in his hands and flicked a few of the buttons with his thumb. “Even more than before, I don't know who I am.”

 

“You were the one giving me advice on this last year.”

 

“I know. Funny how much harder that is to apply to yourself, isn't it?”

 

Edgar laughed. “It took a while for me. I actually think it's still happening.”

 

“You seem like you're doing fine to me.”

 

“I think I'm just faking it really well,” Edgar said, “but thanks.”

 

“I've heard that's kind of the same thing.”

 

“So have I.”

 

The characters on the screen chopped their way through another round of goblins. “Do you think I ( _we_ ) should try?”

 

Edgar took a sharp breath and let it out slowly. “If you really want to, you should.” He made very deliberate eye-contact with Johnny. “ _But_ do me a favor and do it when you know for certain that you're physically healthy enough to handle it if things go bad.”

 

“That's so fucking reasonable, god. How am I supposed to do irresponsible fun shit living with you?”

 

Edgar grinned at him. “I was born to ruin your fun.”

 

“'I was born to stare at who stares back at me',” Johnny recited.

 

Edgar wilted a little. “It'll be soon, don't worry. You're getting better all the time.”

 

 

 

 

A few days later, Johnny wanted Chinese food for a late breakfast, and Edgar saw no reason not to try to order it. They spoke with the delivery guy over the phone, claimed an outbreak of the undead in the house, left money for him in the mailbox, and had him leave the food on the porch. Johnny was delighted when the scheme actually worked, excitedly hugging Edgar in celebration and then scooping up the bag of food and hauling it immediately upstairs.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“Taking the food upstairs.”

 

“You're going to eat this in bed?”

 

“Yeah, and you're coming with me because I'm weak and sick and pathetic and it's sad.”

 

“You're carrying ten pounds of noodles up the stairs.”

 

“And I am going to die doing it, oh no, how could my boyfriend let this happen?” Johnny sighed dramatically. “How could he have been so careless? This tragedy could have been prevented!”

 

Edgar followed him up he stairs and into the bedroom, where Johnny was already staging the white paper containers on the bed. “Oh, look. It's a miracle. He's alive. Thank God.”

 

Johnny laughed and handed Edgar a pair of chopsticks. “Come eat before I die of sarcastic abandonment.”

 

Chopsticks were not his strong point, but Edgar snapped them apart and grabbed a container of food.

 

They paired lo mein with a special on legends and folklore that had an impressive CGI budget though not much else. While Edgar struggled with his food, Johnny picked something from every container with ease.

 

When he failed to hold more than one noodle yet again, Edgar began contemplating pouring the container directly into his mouth. “How do you do this so well?”

 

“Keep the bottom one stable. They're not scissors.”

 

Edgar's noodles slipped from his lackluster chopstick grip and fell into the blanket beside him. “Shit,” he said, trying to pick them up without smashing them into the fabric. “This is all your fault.”

 

“Me? What the hell did I do? You're the uncultured swine who can't chopstick.”

 

“How the hell did you figure it out?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I don't know, maybe I killed someone with them over some General Tso's in a past life.”

 

Edgar flung the dropped noodles into the empty bag everything had arrived in and sighed. “You know what's fucked up?”

 

“My entire sentence?”

 

“No, that I'm kind of _used_ to sentences like that.”

 

Among the aromas of lo mein and too much fried rice came the smallest wisps of a tune. It was distant and muffled as though it was playing from the basement. Edgar leaned toward the door, trying to get a better sense of it.

 

“Do you hear something?” he asked.

 

“What?”

 

“Listen.” He turned down the volume on the television and tried to will his hearing to be stronger. The tune was still there, faint, and maybe struggling, but definitely there. “There, hear that?”

 

“I don't hear anything.”

 

“Did you leave something on downstairs?” he asked.

 

“No?”

 

He glanced around the room as the sound poked at him and then looked to Johnny. “Are you wearing headphones?”

 

“Nope,” Johnny said as he shoved a heap of noodles into his mouth.

 

“Can't you hear music?”

 

“No.”

 

“I think you're fucking with me.”

 

Johnny stopped chewing, listened, and dramatically swallowed his food. “I think you're on crack.”

 

“Hang on, okay? This is going to drive me crazy, I'm just going to go look. I feel like it's right here. It could be something we kicked under the bed.” He shook his head as he moved to slide off the bed to get a look underneath. “I can't believe you can't hear it.”

 

Johnny reached out and grabbed Edgar's elbow, keeping him in bed. “You said it's right here?”

 

Their eyes met and Edgar's breath stuck in his throat. “Yes.”

 

Silently, and just sightly trembling, Johnny lifted Edgar's glasses from his face and covered Edgar's eyes with one hand.

 

“Where is it coming from now?” Johnny whispered.

 

He didn't even really need to ask, but in the dark and with some of Johnny's skin against his, the origin of the song was obvious. It crawled softly around his own song and mingled with it in ways that baffled and excited him. He couldn't predict the pattern of it, but loved it regardless.

 

Edgar gently pulled Johnny's hand from his eyes. “You.”

 

Johnny's eyes widened and the song with them. It opened, deepened, shook and developed more layers that it had had just a moment ago. It was definitely Johnny. It wove through every thought Edgar had, permeated every memory. It played through everything he knew like it had always been there. Every connection he'd ever made with Johnny was sewn with the thread of this song and it stabbed into him, felt wrong, felt alarming, felt unreal and unnatural that this was his first time hearing it.

 

“What does it sound like?” Johnny's voice was small and unsteady.

 

“You can't hear it?”

 

Johnny shook his head and his breath grew shallow. “No. What does it sound like?”

 

“I can't – I can't even describe it.”

 

“Please.” Johnny moved in front of him, sat on his knees and stared into him on the verge of tears. “Just hum or something.”

 

“I – should I be hearing this before you? This doesn't seem right.”

 

“I heard pieces of yours before I knew what it was. I played like three notes of it and it nearly broke you, remember?”

 

“I don't want to break you.”

 

“Please.”

 

“It feels like cheating. Or a trap or something.”

 

“Then I fucking cheated!” Johnny screeched. The song surged upward with his voice, and then settled back down around Edgar like warm water. Johnny exhaled slowly, shakily, trying to keep calm. “Come on, don't keep this from me.”

 

“Okay, okay. Here.” He held an arm up, inviting Johnny close. Johnny collapsed on his chest like he'd been waiting for the offer. Edgar closed his arms around Johnny, held on to him, held on to the song, and tried to understand it. “Give me a minute, okay? Let me try to get the feeling of it.”

 

Johnny nodded against his ribs and shuddered slightly, sending ripples through the tune that was seeping into everything Edgar had ever been. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the core of the song, but much like Johnny, it was keen on slipping away when Edgar most wanted to hold on. He tried to find parts that repeated, a coherent refrain, something to hum back to Johnny, but the song was not interested in cooperating. It swirled around him, through him, but never got close enough or stayed long enough for him to grab. Things echoed in the back of his head that soothed him and made his heart sing while something at the front was violent and reactive and tried to pierce through his bones. Sharp and vicious but flowing and enchanting, this song had more layers than Edgar could ever hope to replicate by humming. He could have been lost in it for days.

 

“Edgar?”

 

And then the song opened for him, like he'd been invited, and a tune he could follow poured out before him.  
  
“Just a sec.”

 

He followed it until it felt comfortable, until he felt he knew it enough to trust it, and started to hum along. Against his chest, Johnny took and held a sharp breath. Edgar opted not to ask if he was okay. He'd likely say no and beg Edgar to keep humming anyway. The auto-pilot part of his brain had taken control of his hands, and he felt himself 'playing' the notes to other layers on the song against Johnny's back.

 

The weight on his chest lifted and Johnny sat up. His eyes were wet and a little red as he reached forward and put his hands gently over Edgar's ears. He looked over Edgar's face like he'd never seen it before and would need to remember it.

 

“Do you still hear it?”

 

Edgar nodded, kept trying to keep up with humming it.

 

Johnny let out a sigh and his hands and shoulders fell as everything in him relaxed. “I would give anything to be in your skin right now.”

 

Edgar lost the humming in a laugh. “If that wouldn't involve one of us being severely disfigured, I'd let you.”

 

Johnny laughed and fell back against Edgar. He curled against him like a content cat and settled in just as something familiar faintly whispered from the TV.

 

“ _ the caution tape comes out again _

_and here I fucking am again_

_ on my self-guided downward spiral _ ”

 

 

“Oh,” Edgar said. “It's us.”

 

“ _orange cones in line they talk_

_of accident inscribed sidewalk_

_'come on, kid, let's see a smile'”_

 

Johnny looked over his shoulder as a new episode of Mysterious Mysteries began their segment on 'The Homicides' with a clip from one of the songs Johnny sang to get the crew to see him.

 

“Holy shit,” Johnny laughed into Edgar's shirt. “I forgot it was gonna be on. I don't know if I can take this.”

 

“What?”

 

“It's just – I feel okay. _Really_ okay. I probably shouldn't. I'm fighting a losing battle against this romance nonsense, I can't sing at the moment, I still have the key to Hell stuck to me, and a national cable audience just found out I'm apparently a cryptid.” He reached for his abandoned lo mein and propped himself up long enough for a single bite. “But I'm fine. And it's hilarious. All of it. And I'm so fucking happy. I could probably fucking die happy right now.”

 

“Sorry, I got hung up at the start of that. The romance is _nonsense_ , really? I love you, t – Ah!”

 

Johnny suddenly grabbed Edgar's shirt with such force it dug into Edgar's neck and threw his head back. Edgar let go of him and Johnny's grip on the shirt vanished, replaced by a frantic clawing and strangled gasps.

 

“Ohmygod, Nny? What's wrong? Is it the noodles? Nod if you're choking!”

 

Johnny said nothing, though his mouth moved as though he were trying to and his unfocused eyes stared right through Edgar. Johnny's song screamed around him, blocking out most of Edgar's thoughts and tearing into his heart.

 

“Nny!” Edgar shook him, tried to sit him up, but Johnny responded like a rag doll, his head snapping back and forth with the motion.

 

“Johnny, come on!”

 

With a violent jolt, Johnny's back arched, his eyes went wide, a tiny, strangled noise escaped his throat, and he fell back limply against Edgar's arms.

 

Only as it faded from his mind did Edgar realize that Johnny's song had had no words.

 

_She's Got Technicolor Shoes_

 

“Nny!” Not a single chorus.

 

_Work In Progress_

 

“Johnny, wake up!” No clever word play.

 

_Never Been Hot Enough_

 

“No, no, no, come on!” No identifying phrase.

 

_If_

 

“You can't do this, no, no! Johnny, come on, wake up!” No title.

 

_Song Without A Name_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is more and I'm just gonna have to pull a Johnny here and ask you to trust me. Please stick around with me for next month!
> 
>  
> 
> I did do a POV switch mid-chapter in this one, which I generally don't like doing, but the last time I did it this way I really needed to, and it was kind of the same for this one. Maybe if I were some kind of professional I would have worked around it, but since this shit is my spare time for free, you get what you get. Though perhaps it's somewhat foreshadowing in its own right. 
> 
> The visit to Johnny's house was shorter in the original, and was just a part of a chapter rather than the real meat of one. There was also a little less going on, but that's been somewhat the story of my life with reSWAN vs SWAN. Back then, I drew something of everyone in the outfits they were sleeping in and I've done something of a revisiting of that image this time around too. 
> 
> I vented a few frustrations from my real life into this chapter, though they're quite obscured. The most obvious one, though, centers around my house being out of order on my street and thus my mail gets lost all the time. I'm house number 12. 
> 
> I'm fond of an awful lot of stuff in this one. The bit of a tour through Johnny's brain as he wakes himself up from being someone else is one of my favorite bits. Plus, because we're following the original in terms of the general outline of things again, I was able to lift some lines directly or only slightly modified. 
> 
> The longer I spend with this version of the story, though, the more uncomfortable the original feels for me. 
> 
> That said, I'm going to get some Chinese food.  
>  
> 
> Songs: 
> 
> Greta Salóme - Hear Them Calling: I've been working in bits of this song for a year now. I would love it if you watched the video that accompanies it, because I loved it before the video and then once I saw it it sort of cemented the thing in my mind as belonging in this story. There are some things about it and why I chose it that I can't talk about here because ~spoilers~, but I've been adoring it for a while now and I'm so happy to have it out here at everyone.
> 
> Squonk Opera - Behind Your Skin: This song was in the original SWAN, though not in the context it serves here. If I ever had the full lyrics for this song, I have lost them, and I was not feeling up for contacting Squonk Opera to obtain them, so we get what I could discern. It was all I really needed anyway. I like the way it's used here a lot more, regardless. Now that I've used this one, there's only one song from the original SWAN left to use. I can't believe it.
> 
> Lord Huron - Meet Me In The Woods: The first time I heard this I was almost shaking with excitement over how perfect it was. It was complete chance that I heard it and I am so happy for that accident all the time. I've been holding this one back for maybe a year now, but as soon as I heard it I knew where it needed to go, so I waited.


	26. shatter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A death and after.

 

Johnny was not breathing, and Edgar did not know CPR, no matter how many times he'd seen it on TV. He tried to replicate what he'd seen, but he was unsteady, trembling, and about to be sick.

 

Words spilled from Edgar's mouth, but he hardly heard them, hardly registered them as his. He called to Johnny, he screamed at nothing, he felt his whole body shaking in mounting panic.

 

There was nothing from Johnny. He was empty. No pulse, no breathing.

 

The room spun, the world unraveled as it insisted on going forward without him.

 

“Edgar?!”

 

Devi's voice.

 

Footsteps, chaos, yelling. Everyone he knew forced their way into his bedroom. They gasped in unison when they saw him with Johnny motionless in his arms, and then immediately rushed in all around him. They pulled at him, at Johnny, all screaming or crying or shaking.

 

“What did you do?!” Jimmy screamed.

 

“Nothing!” Edgar shouted back.

 

“Oh my god,” Tenna choked.

 

Jimmy grabbed at Johnny's lifeless body, felt for breathing and a pulse and everything Edgar had tried to do because he'd saw it on a crime show.

 

“Oh my god, ohmygod,” Tenna said again.

 

“I don't – I don't remember how to do this right,” Jimmy sputtered as he tilted Johnny's head back. “I've only read it, I can't remember, I don't know. Shit, shit.”

 

Devi held her hand over her mouth. She parted her fingers to speak as though she were afraid to move too much. “What happened?”

 

Edgar shook his head. “I don't know, I don't know. He was fine, and then he couldn't breathe or – We were eating, but he was fine, oh my god, I – I heard his song, he was so happy.”

 

Jimmy sobbed something incoherent and Tenna turned into Devi's shoulder.

 

“Oh my _god._ ”

 

“He's not really the one you should be concerned with.”

 

Pepito stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed. He blurred at the edges, mostly black smoke that dissipated into the air.

 

Edgar pulled Johnny against his chest. “You.”

 

“Me, indeed,” Pepito replied with a slight bow. “I told you I'd be back at the end, did I not?”

 

“Stay away.”

 

Pepito ignored him and stepped up to the edge of the bed. “I also – you will recall – warned you about the incredible pain you were going to find for yourself if you insisted on getting this attached to him. Here it is. Now, I hope he was worth it and you all had fun while he was here. Johnny and I have some business.”

 

At the mention of his name, the key on Johnny's neck pulled away from his skin and he flickered out of Edgar's arms like he'd been a hologram. Edgar grasped feebly at the nothing in his arms as Johnny reappeared hanging limply in the air in front of Pepito, who put out his arms as though preparing to carry Johnny away.

 

Jimmy tried to charge at Pepito, his arms flailing, but he slipped on some discarded laundry on Edgar's floor and missed getting a grip on Pepito by mere inches. He fell to the floor with a loud thud just as Pepito and Johnny vanished with a snap of Pepito's fingers.

 

“Oh, god, no.” Edgar tried to pull himself out of the bed while the others fell apart around him.

 

Tenna put her arms out to catch him as he staggered off the mattress. “What are you – what are you doing?”

 

“Pepito has him! We have to go get him!”

 

Devi pulled Jimmy off the floor as Edgar made his way out of the room and down the stairs. His knees were buckling and he nearly fell several times, but he had to go.

 

The others followed after him, calling his name, screaming in a panic about what they were going to do.

 

The outside world mocked him with birds and sunlight and people in cars blasting music as he ran and stumbled down the block, around the corner, and toward the school.

 

There was no house on the corner anymore, but there was also no empty lot. Instead, Edgar stood over an enormous hole. He couldn't see a bottom, just black. He dropped to his hands and knees, digging his fingers into the edge of the abyss in front of him.

 

“Pepito!” he called into the dark. “Pepito! Give him back!”

 

His voice echoed back softly, but there was otherwise no response from the black. The others ran up behind him, out of breath and, in Tenna's case, crying.

 

“Edgar, what are you doing?!”

 

“Pepito has him, we have to do something.”

 

Devi knelt down beside him. “What is this? What the fuck happened?”

 

“I don't know, it was like this when I got here, I just – Nny is down there. He's got to be.”

 

Tenna and Jimmy stood on his left, holding on to each other. Tenna sniffled. “Even if he is, he's --”

 

“No! If Pepito wanted him, if he knew this was going to happen, he's alive.”

 

“Pepito is _Satan._ Pepito owns _Hell._ What does Hell need living people for?”

 

Edgar clenched his fists in the grass. “Why are you so eager for him to be dead?!”

 

“I'm not!” Tenna squeaked, her tears starting anew. “He just – we _saw_.”

 

Edgar shook his head. “That doesn't mean anything.”

 

Jimmy tugged on Tenna's shoulder. “Come on, Ten, sit.” They settled in the grass next to Edgar and gazed into the empty hole with him.

 

Devi threw a rock into the black, but no sound echoed back to them.

 

“Oh, you're all here already.” Dib stood on the pavement behind them, just beyond what was left of Pepito's yard.

 

Edgar brightened immediately and scrambled to his feet. “Dib! I need your help!”

 

“I saw.”

 

“You – ?”

 

“Dib's why we came over,” Jimmy said. “Your camera turned itself on and Dib called us when he saw something was wrong.”

 

Edgar looked between Dib and Jimmy in a daze and touched the pendant on his neck. His tool for amusing Dib while they were singing as fake dead people had recorded Johnny's _actual_ death.

 

_No. He's not dead._

 

“I need to get down there,” Edgar said. “How deep is it? Can you find out?”

 

“Probably, but it would take weeks, I'd need investors and the right tech,and – ”

 

Edgar snapped the chain around his chain and held the necklace over the edge of the hole. “Will this work?”

 

“No, no, no!” Dib stepped forward, flailing his hands at Edgar. “It's the only one we have!”

 

“We only have one Johnny! Is this still recording?!”

 

Dib glanced at his tablet. “Yes, but –!”

 

“Good!” Edgar hurled the charm into the pit as Dib dropped pathetically to his knees.

 

The group looked expectantly at Dib who appeared to be holding back tears as he watched his tablet screen. He swallowed and shook his head. “It's just black so far. I'll – I'll try to adjust the gamma.”

 

Edgar took a step toward him. “How far is it?”

 

“I don't know, the picture isn't great. It's processing. But if it hasn't hit something by now, it is _far.”_

 

“How _far_?” Edgar asked, leaning over the edge.

 

Devi grabbed onto the hem of his shirt. “Don't you dare.”

 

“I have to go get him.”

 

“Are you _crazy_?!” Dib squeaked. “What is wrong with you people?! The drop alone would kill you, not to mention the impact.”

 

“It's supposed to be Hell, right? That shouldn't matter, then.”

 

He took a step back in preparation for throwing himself into the abyss, but the next thing he knew, he was flat on his back in the grass with the air knocked out of his lungs. Jimmy pulled himself up off of Edgar's torso enough to look into his face.

 

“The fuck are you doing?! You think we want to lose you too?!”

 

“No, but he –!”

 

“And what if he isn't?! What if you just drop down there and crunch into the rocks and we never see either of you ever again?!”

 

“I can't just do nothing! I can't leave him! I told him I'd follow him!”

 

“And what if he magically comes back and you're dead at the bottom of a hole?!”

 

“Jimmy!” Tenna screeched, grabbing his elbow.

 

“I don't want this either!” Jimmy pulled his arm away from Tenna but kept his weight on Edgar. “I want him back, I want him alive! But I want you alive too!”

 

“Let me up!”

 

“No, fuck you!”

 

Edgar strained against Jimmy's weight and then fell back helplessly against the grass and closed his eyes. His throat tightened and his eyes prickled with tears. “I have to do something. I can't just not try. What if he was alive when Pepito took him? What if he's stuck down there and we never go to get him? What if he's waiting for us to get him?”

 

“We'll have Dib work on it,” Devi told him. “We won't do nothing. But we can't risk anyone's life in the process.”

 

“He'd want us to,” Edgar said miserably.

 

Devi leaned over him, her eyes teary. “Yeah, but he's an asshole.”

 

“The camera stopped working,” Dib reported. “The signal is gone. Whatever is down there overrode it or is interfering.” He sighed and tucked his tablet into a large pocket inside his coat. “The house used to interfere with all the equipment I used to watch it if I got too close. I'm surprised the camera lasted that long, even for alien tech.”

 

“What now?” Tenna asked. Her voice quivered. Edgar couldn't hear her song.

 

Edgar stared into the sky. It was blue and bright, with only a soft blur of clouds. In the distance, an airplane slid through the blue and birds sang as though the world hadn't just replaced all of Edgar's joy with a black hole. As though it simply did not care that Johnny was no longer there. He took a breath and started sobbing as he felt everything pressing in on him. The longer they were without Johnny the realer it became. Every strained breath he took made his lungs ache and every passing second forced him further and further into a reality he was not sure he could handle.

 

Jimmy lifted himself off of Edgar and pulled him up into a sitting position. Devi collapsed against him in a hug. It might have been the first time Devi had ever hugged him. He felt pressure on his back, on his arms, on his legs, and sat in the grass in front of a bottomless pit to Hell in a pile with everyone he knew in the world, minus the one that mattered most to him.

 

 

 

 

The first night, they all slept in Edgar's living room. Edgar couldn't bear to go to his room, but also couldn't stand being away in case Johnny came back. He couldn't abandon Johnny, couldn't just toss away the last place he'd been like it was nothing. He was too far from Johnny if he wasn't at the pit or in his house.

 

But his _house._

 

Everything was impossible to look at, impossible to move, impossible to do. Devi wanted to help him clean up the Chinese food Edgar and Johnny had been eating when it happened, but Edgar couldn't stand to enter the room and screamed when she moved a pillow. Tenna led Edgar away from the door and he begged Devi not to move anything while Tenna guided him down the stairs.

 

Johnny was in everything. His dishes were in the sink, his shirts still in the dryer, his paintings and doodles were hanging on the walls, the food the basement had provided for him was still sitting in a box on the kitchen table, things were still stashed here or there because Johnny had decided that's where they should go. Johnny followed him through the house like a shadow and replayed everything he'd ever done. Every item was something he'd touched, something he'd had, and disturbing them was like saying Johnny had never been there, bulldozing over him like he hadn't mattered and cleaning up after his existence like he'd been nothing but a spill.

 

It was three days before Edgar could stand to be in his room. He'd convinced the others he could left alone while they retreated home for their own coping with promises of research and contact with Dib. Edgar wasn't sure any of that would happen. Even in his desperation and terror, he suspected it was all just words to keep him calm for now. He entered the room slowly, confronting the void Johnny had left in everything. It still smelled of lo mein even though Devi had thrown it all away and everything was concentrated Johnny. CDs were piled up beside the bed and a cup of water had managed to remain unspilled in the chaos of running after Pepito. Edgar touched it, inched it toward the center of the bedside table, but was unwilling to empty it.

 

He felt for the pendant around his neck and remembered with a drop in his stomach that he'd thrown it into the pit because _Johnny was gone_.

 

The bed creaked when he sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress. He slid to the center of the bed with covers still askew and gazed into the corner where Pepito had taken Johnny. This was the last place Johnny had been. The place where he'd said he could die happy and then _died_ , but in apparent pain, clawing for life, and definitely _not_ happy while Edgar was unable to help him yet again.

 

He gazed at the scar on his wrist. It had been steadily fading, and now was visible only in certain light, but Edgar felt every jagged contour of it as though it were illuminated on his skin.

 

_I could just..._

 

He fell back into the pillows and pressed his face into them. What he wanted was something that smelled like Johnny. What he got was old Chinese food. A hard corner brushed his cheek and when he picked up his head he found Johnny's sketchbook half-tucked under a pillow. He pushed his hand under the pillow and let it rest on the cover of the book, but couldn't bring himself to move it or look at it. What he had of Johnny might be finite now. He couldn't look at everything so soon.

 

 

 

 

Looking at _anything_ was his problem.

 

The next day, the world again mocked him with a beautiful spring morning. All Edgar wanted the world to do was acknowledge that there had been a catastrophic _loss,_ but the world had always been reluctant to acknowledge their existence so of course it would spare no overcast sky or rainstorm for one less invisible teenager.

 

Alone in the house, everything was amplified and quiet. Everything he owned stared back at him, reminding him of what he had once had and what he'd never see again. He found photos everywhere. Johnny had tucked them into every book, into the corners of framed paintings. They'd once been so ordinary he'd stopped even seeing them. Now they struck him with a barb of pain around every corner.

 

He hadn't considered how overwhelming the photos would be, through he'd never considered his life wouldn't include Johnny either. The biggest problem with the photos was that they were either too early – before Edgar had joined them – or too late. After a certain point, there were very few photos taken of Johnny out of makeup, out of character, or when he wasn't performing. That strange blend of Edgar's Johnny and the other two he channeled into his performances was the one in the photos. Maybe their fans wouldn't see the difference, but the eyes weren't right and the smile definitely wasn't Edgar's Johnny.

 

Not that his Johnny had done much smiling in the months before the end. Not real smiling, anyhow. He'd started to recover after the incident with the motel, but before that? He'd been straining so much that all his energy went into balancing the others and the rest of the time he rested, he slept, and barely inhabited his own head. Even in that though, he rested with Edgar. He put his head on Edgar's chest or in his lap. Even when he had no energy to move or speak or smile or paint, he stayed close to Edgar.

 

Edgar was proud of it. Even on nights when Johnny didn't have the energy for his own personality, he chose to take comfort in Edgar. And Edgar loved being whatever he needed, loved that he was able to help even just that little, loved that he and Johnny felt stronger together.

 

And now there was no more together because there was no more Johnny.

 

Now there were only photos.

 

Edgar talked to them sometimes, when he could bear to look at them. He didn't mean to, he'd just catch himself in the middle of a 'conversation' every so often.

 

“I still feel useless. All I can think about is jumping into that hole. If I hadn't been stopped – I'm scared that that delay condemned you. That you're down there trapped and I've abandoned you and now you're _really_ gone because I wasn't strong enough to go _then_ , and follow you no matter what. I'm sorry. Wherever you are, you'll spend the rest of your time there angry with me. It's okay, I'd be angry too.”

 

Other than people in photos, Edgar talked to no one and his days passed wishing he still had the courage to hurl himself into a pit that almost certainly led to Hell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnny woke up with a start, his hands and cheeks scraping against porous stone. He blinked, strained his eyes wide open, but saw nothing but black and black and black.

 

His attempt to call for Edgar failed. No sound came from his throat. His throat hardly even moved. He swallowed several times, coughed, tried to inspire his voice to appear, but nothing brought him out of silence.

 

He ran his hands over the floor, but there was nothing and no one immediately near him. The stone scraped at the skin on his fingertips, but spared his palms thanks to the new gloves. New gloves. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them: thick and warm with no frays or scuffs or dried blood and glitter.

 

Blood.

 

He'd started wearing gloves because he couldn't stop feeling the blood on his hands. There was no blood there now, not that there had ever been, but now he couldn't even feel it. Now there was no psychological weight or hallucination keeping his hands covered, just fashion. His head was quiet, contained, in order. Not even a echo of the others but for the memory that they had once been there. He was the only person inside his skull. He should have been relieved, and maybe he would be if he'd woken up in his own bed this way, but he was in a cave or underground or had been abducted by aliens.

 

Without Edgar.

 

Edgar had just been there. The last thing he remembered was sitting with Edgar and singing something at him. No, the other way. Edgar singing at _him._ Weird. Then something warm and pleasant and blank. He ran his hand though his hair, trying to think, and then his fingers scratched over a freshly shaved scalp. The realization shot chills through his bones. Someone had been touching him, someone was there with him.

 

New gloves, new hair. He patted at his torso frantically – everything was new. A long coat with a high collar and buckle accents. A shirt that felt new instead of cobbled together from six other shirts and held together with glitter paint.

 

The key to Hell was still tied around his neck. It was the only thing on his body that felt familiar. When he wrapped his fingers around it, the panic in his head settled and was replaced with a single word: _Pepito._

 

_Of course._

 

He put a hand above his head and stood up slowly, but he didn't hit anything. Nothing above or to the sides. So he wasn't in a small box. He felt for his pockets and found his knife. At least he'd been allowed to keep that.

 

There were new headphones around his neck, the cord tucked into the pocket where he'd usually carry a CD player, but there was nothing in his pocket. The music played anyway. He raised one shoulder to push one side of the headphones to his ear.

 

 _“Seven devils all around you_  
_Seven devils in your house_  
_See I was dead when I woke up this morning_  
_I'll be dead before the day is done_  
_Before the day is done”_

 

He closed his eyes and clenched the knife. _He's supplying his own fucking soundtrack._

 

His other pockets were empty.

 

_And he stole my goddamn lighter._

 

“I did not.”

 

The voice echoed enough that Johnny sensed he was somewhere very large and very empty. A slight weight fell into his palm and he found his lighter. He almost dropped it in shock, but quickly clenched his hand around it and tried to get it to light.

 

 

 _“And now all your love will be exorcised_  
_And we will find you saying it's to be better now_  
_And it's an even sum_  
_It's a melody_  
_It's a battle cry_  
_It's a symphony”_

 

He tried to call out again – to yell at Pepito or for Edgar – but his throat still did nothing.

 

The lighter sparked and spat and finally gave him a flame, but the light reached nothing but Johnny. It glinted off of buttons and buckles that were not his, but it did nothing to illuminate the space he was trapped in.

 

“You could do better than a lighter, anyway.”

 

_Okay, I have a flame thrower._

 

“No, you don't.”

 

_A gas can._

 

“Come on, now.”

 

_A fucking flashlight._

 

The weight of the flashlight was even more startling than the lighter. He expected to have to will batteries into existence as well, but the light came on when his thumb hit the switch. It traveled beyond where the lighter could reach, and some of the texture and shape of the room came into view. There were no corners, no doors, just smooth waves of lava rock all around.

 

He dropped the lighter to the floor to mark his spot and moved forward.

 

“This is still a little sad.”

 

_You wouldn't give me the flame thrower, Pepito._

 

Pepito appeared in front of him, like he'd so often done on the roof.

 

“I'd hoped to keep that up a little longer,” he said. Johnny shined the light in his eyes. “Hey, hey, easy!”

 

 _What is this? What have you done to me?_ Johnny tried to will the light to shine brighter, but Pepito stood unmoving in front of him, speaking with his eyes closed against the beam.

 

“I did absolutely nothing. Your Edgar took care of everything himself.”

 

_Edgar? Where is he? What did you do to him?_

 

“Oh, I didn't do anything to him. Would you like to see him?”

 

_Of fucking course!_

 

Pepito smirked and snapped his fingers. The floor glowed briefly and then a blinding light shot up three walls that surrounded them. As Johnny's eyes adjusted, he saw movement in the walls. Screens. Devi and Tenna on one, Jimmy on another and Edgar on the one in the center. All of them at home, but … going mad? Everyone was crying, panicking, screaming.

 

_What... what is this?_

 

“It's a 'Welcome Home' present. I thought you'd appreciate seeing your friends deal with your death for a while. Let me know if there's anything I can do to make your stay here more enjoyable. If this becomes a little much for you, direct your attention to the floor, and take in the many charming sights of Hell. I hear there's going to be a rather nice car accident today."

 

He vanished before Johnny could lash out at him.

 

_Dead._

 

That made all this make more sense, though it was a little sickening.

 

The sounds from the walls faded in slowly. Devi swearing loudly and then immediately apologizing to a traumatized Tenna. Jimmy flipping through the radio and screaming at every station, knocking over piles of books and tearing at the holes in his walls.

 

And Edgar.

 

Edgar crying on the stairs like he'd just given up in the middle of a mundane trip to the living room. He leaned against the wall, knocking his glasses askew.

 

On one hand, this was all horrible. On the other, somewhat flattering.

 

Johnny watched Edgar sob so hard he nearly tumbled down the stairs. It startled him out of the worst of the crying and he staggered back upstairs, crawling back into his room and into bed before Johnny didn't want to see anymore.

 

He tore himself away from the walls and instead took a look at the floor, slowly dropping to his knees to really examine what he was seeing. The floor felt like stone, was textured like stone, but was transparent. Directly below him, a whole city churned and buzzed with traffic, people, and lights, but off in the distance things were devoid of any of the bustle and life that should be in a city. Buildings and roads were abandoned, left to crumble while the new part of the city expanded ever onward.

 

There were so many people and yet so few instances of being roasted on spits or boiled alive. This didn't look like the Hell he'd imagined, but he had no reason to doubt that Hell was exactly what he was looking at. He was _dead_ , Pepito was here. He twisted the key on his neck between two fingers.

 

 _Then this should go to something_ _ here. _

 

There was nothing else in this stone bubble with him. Walls, stone, floor, and black void.

 

He took hold of the flashlight and glanced back at Edgar's wall. It was night time for Edgar now though Johnny was certain he'd seen sunlight a few minutes ago.

 

There was nothing when he walked away from the walls. No obstacles, no floor, no air. He was just there, in the black, existing. Out in the black, the flashlight still failed to shine on anything, but he could judge the distance he'd traveled in the black by checking the light from the screens. Which were... what? His own _personal_ Hell? Was he not good enough to be a citizen of Hell-Topia, so he got to watch his sobbing friends instead?

 

Miles under his feet, there was a soft explosion. There was something odd that Johnny couldn't pinpoint about the shape of the smoke and the way it moved, as though it were something alive and not just being generated, but when it cleared, Johnny saw the source of it: a particularly violent car crash. Both vehicles were twisted and mangled and people in and around the collision were screaming.

 

_Should I be able to hear them up here?_

 

When he focused in on individual people, their words echoed through his head.

 

“ _I'll never get the blood stains out of this dress!”_  
  
“All this glass! I tripped! How could this have happened to me?!”

 

_“Now I'll never get across the street in time! Why do bad things happen to good people?!”_

 

Johnny flinched and shook them off.

 

_Idiots. Hell is just for idiots. Unbelievable._

 

They had started as concepts of people too distant for him to feel much sympathy for in the first place, but now he felt nothing at all for the people down below. Just worthless parts of the scenery hung up on mundane nonsense. Like everyone else who couldn't see him.

 

This still left the problem of what he was doing here. Was he like these people? What had he even died from? His last moments alive were blurry. He was with Edgar, and … singing. Wasn't there more than that?

 

Was he going to start forgetting? Had he already?

 

He turned and looked back at the wall where Edgar was still displayed in a live feed, though thankfully he hadn't done anything else.

 

Or maybe not?

 

As he turned, scale and distance warped under his feet, and though he'd walked more than twenty feet into the black, it took him only a step and a half to find himself in front of the wall again.

 

The wall felt just like the floor – porous stone. He knocked on it, pushed on it, scratched at it with his knife, threw the rock at it, but Edgar did not react. He tried to speak, but there was still no sound.

 

_Be great to turn Pepito's mouth off too._

 

The light was different around Edgar, and it was changing rapidly. When Johnny glanced at the others, it was the same. If he focused on them, he saw everything real time, but if he looked away or let something else hold his attention they flickered by him as though he were fast forwarding video tape.

 

_Time passes differently for them. They're going to be over me in seconds if I ever look away from them._

 

Except Edgar, who did so little his wall seemed broken. Jimmy paced, he visited people Johnny didn't know and did _things_ with them Johnny would rather not have seen. Devi painted and destroyed the paintings and started them again. She made noodles with Tenna while they both alternated between tears and rage. Tenna watched television and sewed little toys and took Devi and Jimmy on rides to strange landmarks in the van. But Edgar stayed inside. He rarely left his bed, or the couch. He wouldn't look at the basement, let alone go into it.

 

It was hard to look at, but if he didn't...

 

_They're going to go on without me. They're going to forget._

 

He sat on the stone floor in the center of his sadness panorama and watched, waited. Tenna and Devi visited Jimmy in his trailer, sat in a heap with him on his broken couch. They tried to visit Edgar together, but he wouldn't answer. They pounded on the door and he screamed at them.

 

“At least he's alive,” Tenna offered when Devi and Jimmy began trying to break the door down. “Maybe that's good enough for a while?”

 

A while was another month, passing around Johnny in blinks, in moments distracted by the floor, in brief excursions into the black, looking for a way out.

 

Edgar let them in then, though there was nothing in the gesture and nothing in his expression but that he'd given up ignoring their assault on his front door. Around the house were still so many of Johnny's things, most exactly where he remembered leaving them.

 

And Devi asked how he was doing and he didn't know. Did he want help, he didn't know. Was there anything they could do, he didn't know. Why was he doing this, he didn't know.

 

“We don't know what to do either,” Devi told him. “But we thought we should do _something_. Tell people.”

 

“Tell people? What are you talking about?”

 

“I thought about posting something on the blog,” Jimmy said with an apologetic shrug.

 

“You want to _blog_ about him dying?!”

 

“No, I just thought they'd like to know! I thought it would help!”

 

Edgar refused to discuss it further and, a week of Edgar's time later, Johnny watched his own funeral.

 

“We don't know what happened to him,” Devi told one of Dib's cameras. “Heart failure, maybe. I guess if you want to be assholes you could ask me to produce a body, but you're just going to have to trust us. If you were really like us, you'd _feel_ that he's missing.”

 

Johnny had to laugh a little hearing her use some of Jimmy's marketing tactics at a funeral. He was so fond of 'True fans won't ask questions we don't have the answers to.'

 

While Devi and the others sat with Dib's cameras on a live stream to somewhere, Edgar sat at home in the pink recliner, talking to photographs.

 

“I'm sorry. I can't make myself go. I know people will want to hear from me and I just can't. They don't need my suffering to make theirs feel better. They didn't even lose _you._ They lost some songs, some fun thing to do on a Saturday. I lost everything I thought my life was going to be.”

 

_Fuck them, Edgar._

 

Johnny turned the key on his neck around in his fingers. The metal was cool to the touch. So maybe he wasn't giving off heat anymore...

 

While Devi apologized that they couldn't even perform instrumental versions of their songs for the funeral without Edgar, an uncomfortable anxiety twisted in Johnny's chest.

 

_I have to get out of here._

 

 

 

 

The digital funeral spread quickly and with it the realization that 'Mysterious Mysteries' possessed the last footage of Johnny. The next thing Edgar knew, the episode featuring the Homicides aired several times a day, and channels that weren't airing the show were talking about how a band with a modest local cult following had grown into a wide-spread sensation thanks to a hacky telelvision show and the lead singer's strange hushed-up death. Jimmy called and said he'd been inundated with questions and blog followers while Devi was having trouble buying groceries. Tenna had been repeatedly contacted about doing another show about Johnny's death itself and she'd been hanging up in a panic every time.

 

Back issues of magazines that had interviewed them became hot collector's items overnight. Garbage television shows ran segments that speculated on Johnny's death and analyzed the voices and body language of everyone present in the videos. Edgar's own absence in the videos generated even more talk. Edgar was dead too, or he'd murdered Johnny. Johnny and Edgar were both alive, they'd just run away together, either for love or artistic differences with the others. One speculator had it exactly right (“Well, my theory is that they were involved and Edgar is just too devastated to appear in public.”), but even she was making money for her opinion on Edgar's pain. So were the people selling “I've Seen The Homicides,” and “Nny Is Not Dead” merchandise. Every news outlet reached out for him, tried to tear off pieces of him to sell on television.

 

There were interviews with fans who were crying and Edgar wondered what they could possibly be mourning. What had they lost compared to Edgar or even Jimmy and the others? At the end of their interviews, fans apparently devastated over something they'd 'lost' mentioned their blogs, their t-shirt shops, their tribute art prints.

 

Nature had refused to acknowledge Johnny's passing with thunder and lightning. The world at large acknowledged it by finding new ways to make a profit.

 

 

 

 

 

“Having fun?”

 

_Loads._

 

“There's no need to be so hostile.” Pepito leaned close to Johnny's walls like watching fish in an aquarium. “And what are they up to today?”

 

_I watched my own funeral._

 

“Oh, lucky! I know so many people who want that opportunity.”

 

_And now my work is more popular than it ever was when I was alive._

 

“As is so often the case,” Pepito said, clicking his tongue in mock sadness. “But hey, you got to see it! How gratifying.”

 

_Don't even pretend that's how I feel about it._

 

“I find if you pretend hard enough, you can make anything real.”

 

Johnny rolled his eyes and continued watching Edgar recoil in agonized frustration from every piece of media bearing Johnny's image. _Why did this happen?_

 

“I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific.”

 

_I died._

 

 _“_ Oh, that! You didn't figure that out already?”

 

 _You were pretending to warn us about this._ Y _ou knew it was going to happen. Sooner rather than later._

 

“Well, yes. Difficult to know when, of course. These sorts of things are different for everyone, but it was the plan.”

 

_Did I choke?_

 

“No. You were just happy.”

 

_Happy?_

 

“That was the agreement. Edgar asked to have the chance to make you happy, you agreed to it, the folks upstairs supplied everything we thought would be a means to that end.”

 

_The basement._

 

“Oh, of course that, but more than that too. They gave you everything in the hopes you'd be happy and die sooner: foolishly loyal friends, an adoring partner with a home to offer, a successful artistic career... Whatever they thought might be the trigger. You didn't choke on noodles, you choked on your own contentment with being.”

 

_Because Edgar sang that song at me._

 

Pepito shrugged. “That might be simplifying it a bit, but sure. I imagine you have more complicated feelings in you about it than that. However it happened, he kept saying he wanted to make you happy, which, really, if you think about it, is rather funny and like he was saying he wanted you to die.”

 

_Forgive me if I don't laugh._

 

“Well, then you two had to go and do your little _thing_ and make all this worse for everyone. I did try to minimize the impact this would make, but you two refused.”

 

Johnny glanced at Edgar's wall, where he was angry or terrified and hiding his wet face from household objects.

 

_And you couldn't tell us for some reason._

 

“It's so complicated, the politics here. We're bound by certain rules, by strict wording. It's not that I wouldn't tell you because it was socially inconvenient, I really just could _not_. It's what I am. Genetics. Devils and demons, we do so love our words, our contracts.”

 

_And Squee?_

 

“He's bound by the same rules I am, I told you.”

 

_Squee's human.  
_

Pepito smirked. “How old do you think he is?”

 

_Not twenty-something, huh?_

 

“A few times that.”

 

_And you've just been holding him here all that time._

 

“I'm not holding him anywhere. And he doesn't come here.”

 

 _Why not? It's so fucking inviting._ He rolled his eyes. _I bet there's good shopping down there._

 

“This is no place for him.”

 

_Shame. I'd like to talk to him sometime. Catch up on murder time._

 

“What happened to me and Todd is my fault. It's my job to protect him from further... unpleasantness.”

 

_I see it's okay for unpleasantness to happen to me, though._

 

“This is where you were going to go before. What you just had was borrowed time. You ought to consider being grateful you experienced any of it.”

 

The rock wall under Johnny's hand still showed Edgar suffering, crying. For now. One day, he'd be done crying. One day, he'd start to feel okay. One day, he'd have lived longer without Johnny than he did with him. One day, he'd be ten years older and go whole days, weeks, without once thinking of Johnny. One day, he'd look older and think of the brief weird thing he had when he was a teenager and then smile and go back to the people who had ended up being his life instead. And it could happen this week. If anything here distracted Johnny for too long, it could be today.

 

Johnny watched Edgar intently, but continued to entertain Pepito.

 

_While we’re being cheery, you wanna tell me what happened to actual Satan?_

 

“It was an accident,” Pepito stated flatly. “You know the one.”

 

_So you accidentally wiped your family out of existence along with all of reality. That’s fantastic. I’m glad all this was really professionally put together._

 

“I was a child, thank you.”

 

_I’d argue you still are._

 

“Let's not throw stones, shall we? I could say the same to you.”

 

It was the first time he didn't feel like arguing that point.

 

Pepito left him alone with his wall friends and Johnny spent his time, however much it was, sitting among them, watching the bustle in Hell just beyond the toes of his boots. He had to be here for some reason other than to watch these walls and baffling misfortune of the nobodies below. He had to be being held for some real reason. Otherwise, this was an extremely elaborate thing to do with someone whose ability to affect the world had been limited to aggressively singing at them and stealing convenience store food.

 

Though Pepito had said he was always meant to be here. So had they had him living a life that didn't count toward anything? He looked up at the walls around him, at his friends dragging their way through their lives. Were _they_ on borrowed time too? Would Edgar be coming here because he'd helped the previous incarnation of Johnny?

 

His chest twisted a bit when he thought that he'd prefer that to Edgar going to some kind of Heaven.

 

_I could see him down here._

 

_Though that probably defeats the purpose of Hell._

 

There was a crack and a thud and suddenly a body landed on his clear stone floor, lying in a miserable pile several feet from where he was sitting. Johnny scrambled to his feet, casting a glance to his walls. Whoever this was, it was not one of his friends.

 

The fallen person shook their head, stood up, and met Johnny's gaze.

 

“Um, hi,” they said.

 

_Hi? Are you kidding? What the fuck just happened?_

 

“I seem to, uh, to have made a mistake,” the other explained nervously. “Nothing, really, we were just talking and she stabbed me.”

 

_What?_

 

“It's nothing,” they explained. “No big deal.”

 

_What are you doing here?_

 

The second Johnny thought the words, the other person changed. The nervous 'it's nothing' laughter vanished and was replaced with repulsive rage.

 

“She's a worthless _bitch!_ I can't believe she fucking _stabbed_ me, that fucking bitch was asking for it! How dare she!”

 

Johnny jumped back.

 

Whatever was left of this person continued. “Why do they always ask for it?! If they just wouldn't make me mad this wouldn't happen!”

 

_You're disgusting._

 

The filth in human form screamed at him, took a few steps forward, and reached for the key on Johnny's neck. When Johnny's fingers closed protectively around it, the floor screamed open around the horrific creature's feet and swallowed them into the world below. Johnny watched their body crash into the corner of a skyscraper like a rag doll before they plummeted to the pavement. A few seconds later, the mangled body stood up and complained about what the fall had done to their clothing.

 

_Key to Hell._

 

They never stopped coming after that. They appeared before him like physical phone calls: constantly for a solid twenty minutes here, maybe one in an hour there. Each seemed casual, normal, and even friendly when they arrived. They might be a little nervous, but most were laughing and pleasant.

 

And then Johnny posed that question: _What are you doing here?_

 

And they came undone. Friendly and casual was replaced with screaming confession, hate, and excuses. All of it vile and far worse than anything Johnny had done while most recently alive. Johnny had stolen from a chain of gas stations and charity donations, these creatures had violated people and, unlike his first visitor, often lived to tell about it for a long time. All pretended to know nothing about how they could be where they were until Johnny asked, then their sins and vices poured from them like spilled entrails.

 

Each one he sent to the city below, each one swallowed by the floor at Johnny's whim with just a purposeful grip on the key tied to his neck after a simple question.

 

_I'm not here to be in Hell myself, I'm here to be the judge._

 

Days later, Pepito visited again. He appeared next to Johnny just as the most recent damned soul was devoured by the floor.

 

“I'm so pleased,” Pepito cooed. “You seem to be a natural.”

 

_Surely I can't be better at it than the son of Satan._

 

“I didn't say that.”

 

_This is the job you didn't want._

 

“It's a bit tedious, don't you think? It's all so like Hell and our kind. All bound up in particular words and other people being unfortunate. You do tire of your whole life being literal this, word play that, and straining for loopholes after a century of it.”

 

 _How sad for you. How many loopholes ruined_ _ your _ _life?_

 

“Oh, come now. This whole situation has been difficult for me and you're not appreciating it.”

 

Johnny 'said' nothing, but the idea had been planted. If loopholes got him in here, they could get him out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edgar left his house rarely. It had been weeks or months or something. Some incomprehensible amount of time to have existed without Johnny, whatever it was. Time flew or it crawled and Edgar lagged limply behind it, dragged forward only because he happened to be alive. He still felt that the closest he could be to Johnny was to stay where Johnny had last existed and when he wasn't doing that he was staying where he thought Johnny might still exist.

 

The hole betrayed nothing. No sound came up from it, nothing he threw inside seemed to land anywhere. Dib's camera had stopped working the day Johnny died and he wouldn't contribute another one.

 

Logically, Edgar knew he wasn't alone and that his own death would have an effect on others, but when he sat in the grass at the edge of the black pit, he thought the pit would be easier on everyone in the long run. If he was in there instead he could find Johnny and if he died he could find Johnny. The others would be upset for a while, but Devi and Tenna had each other and Jimmy had his tattoo people and no matter how often they all told Edgar that he had them too, it didn't feel the same. He'd told Johnny once that if Johnny ever killed himself he would go with him. This hadn't been suicide, but the impulse to go after Johnny still lingered.

 

It hit him at random times during the day. When he saw his wrist and the faded scar, he immediately thought of the cause of Johnny's matching one. Though he hadn't had the energy to shave more than once or twice since Johnny's death, every time he saw the razor in the bathroom he told himself he could use it for other purposes than his face. One desperate day, he'd run out of the kitchen with a box of Cherry Pop-Tarts tucked under his arm, ready to throw himself into Hell to share a ridiculous meal with Johnny.

 

On days like that, he set out with the explicit plan of never coming back and every time he'd returned to his house with the feeling that the walls were mocking him for not completing his task.

 

_What happened to 'fuck fear?'_

 

It might have died when Johnny did.

 

 

 

 

 

Until Edgar, Johnny had never been scared for another person before. That they might endanger themselves was just sort of amusing or strange and didn't impact Johnny's life in the slightest. Edgar even bleeding had upset Johnny, but Edgar's lingering obsession with the giant hole in the empty lot was so distracting it always held Johnny's complete attention until he was certain the danger had passed for the time being.

 

Edgar hovered near the edge of the hole often, at random times day and night, sometimes sticking a leg or an arm in, sometimes throwing in rocks or other items and straining to hear them hitting some kind of bottom.

 

“Distracting, is he?” Pepito said, phasing in from nothing.

 

_Fuck off._

 

“Oh, come on, let's try to be friends about this.”

 

_I'm not your friend, Pepito._

 

Pepito shrugged. “It doesn't make a difference to me, but it will probably improve your experience down here.” He let out a long breath and regarded Edgar's wall like a mildly intriguing piece of art. “We haven't had a jumper in a long time.”

 

_What will happen to him if he jumps in there?_

 

“He'll end up in front of you, I imagine.”

 

 _He'll come_ _ here _ _? He's never done anything wrong in his life!_

 

Pepito frowned and crossed his arms. “This is not a matter of theology, my friend. This is geography. If you jump into an entrance to Hell, you _end up in Hell_ . _”_

 

_Oh._

 

“He'd shatter everything in his body, of course.”

 

 _Where does that hole lead?_ Maybe he could find it, maybe he could call up to Edgar, maybe he could climb out, maybe –

 

“Everywhere. No where.” Pepito shrugged. “It doesn't matter. He's not going to do it.”

 

_You don't think so?_

 

“He'd have done it by now if he was going to. He's smart enough to know it would kill him and not confident enough to survive it.”

 

_What difference would being confident make?_

 

Pepito laughed. “The rules here are not like the ones in his world. This place is built on people's expectations and ideas and not much more. If he was absolutely certain he would make it here, then he very likely would. But while he carries any logic of that world with him, even the slightest fear that he'll be shattered to bits if he lands, that's all that will happen to him.”

 

 _Is it like that for everyone?_ Johnny kicked at the floor, indicating the chaotic city below him.

 

“Mostly. There are some limits for the _residents._ ”

 

_I see._

 

Edgar sat on the edge of the hole with his legs dangling into it like he was at the pool while humming something to himself. Then he fell back into the grass with a heavy sigh. He stayed that way for several minutes, staring into the sky. Johnny only felt relaxed again when Edgar finally stood up and left, cursing himself and apologizing to Johnny that he wasn't able to jump in yet again.

 

_Stop apologizing for not murdering yourself, fuck._

 

While Edgar was home safe, if not distraught, Jimmy's voice began to mingle with ones Johnny didn't recognize. On the other wall, Jimmy climbed into a car with several other people who could see him there. They were covered in tattoos and piercings and welcomed Jimmy as though he were part of them.

 

_His tattoo people._

 

It was almost surprising to find out they were real, or at least that they continued to be real after the first tattoo. Jimmy easily entwined himself in them while they drove. They joked with him and teased him just like Johnny and the others did, but they also touched him in ways the Homicides never would. Johnny looked away, preferring the sights of Hell to anything happening that car. He might not have ever looked back, but when the car stopped and the sounds changed to be some kind of house party, the other voices got his attention.

 

“Is this him? The band kid?”

 

“Yeah, yeah. This is Jimmy. Jimmy this is Rob. He's that artist I was telling you about.”

 

Jimmy practically exploded with enthusiasm. “Oh, shit, wow! I loved what you did on Chris and Lise!”

 

“Yeah? You looking to get something yourself?”

 

“Oh, yeah, definitely. I kind of wanted to get something because of someone I lost and I thought you'd be a good fit, but it's gonna take me a while to figure out the money thing, I'm kinda... stuck right now. It's complicated.”

 

“Really? Well, maybe we can work some stuff out.”

 

Johnny clenched a fist as Rob reached out and tilted Jimmy's chin up. Rob's tone, gestures, and words were the same as every sleezy person Johnny had ever seen in the movies he'd watched with Edgar. Edgar could recognize them at first sight, even pre-sleeze, he'd just seen so much of it. He'd pinpoint them seconds into the start of the movie if they showed up that early. Jimmy either lacked this skill or didn't care. Maybe Jimmy _wanted_ get into trouble, maybe he _liked_ bad things happening to him.

 

Or maybe, like always, he didn't know when to say 'no' as much as he didn't know how to listen to it.

 

There were few things Johnny wanted to look at less than Jimmy kissing people, but kissing them under questionable circumstances was one of them.

 

“Uh, shit, okay,” Jimmy said. “That was weird.”

 

Rob shrugged. “It doesn't have to be.”

 

“Where did everyone else go?”

 

“Giving us some privacy. We're talking business right?”

 

“Are we?”

 

_No. Please stop trying to get a tattoo about me from a garbage person._

 

“Yeah, you want me to do that work you want done, right?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Then we trade. You do some stuff for me now, I get you a good discount on that tattoo.”

 

“Oh. Uh, I might be into that, but – whoa, whoa, hang on.”

 

“Hey, it's okay, we're just gonna – ”

 

Johnny flinched and turned to look back to Edgar when another voice erupted from Jimmy's wall.

 

“Hey, Rob, did you find the dude from the dead band? I heard they brought him.”

 

“Jesus, will you knock?!”

 

“Oh, fuck, sorry. I didn't know you already – ”

 

“Get the hell out!”

 

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” The other voice changed its tone. “You the dead band kid? How you coping with no more band?”

 

“Uh...” Jimmy began.

 

Rob was less unsure of his feelings about that question. “There's no more band?”

 

“Uh, yeah,” Jimmy said, using the distraction to rearrange Rob's hands. “Our vocalist died.”

 

“What the fuck?”

 

The third voice laughed. “Shit, Rob, didn't you know? It's been all over the TV. They air that Mysterious Mysteries thing all the time still.”

 

Rob shoved Jimmy so hard he staggered back into a nearby wall. “Get away from me. And you!” He stormed off toward the third person. “Find me fucking Travis, he owes me fifty bucks for getting this kid here.”

 

Jimmy stood alone in the room for several seconds before he tugged silently at his clothes to put them back where they belonged. He picked up a phone in the corner of the room.

 

“Hi,” he said when Devi picked up on the other end. “Can you come get me and ask me no questions?”

 

“Shit, Jimmy, what's wrong?”

 

“That's a question.”

 

“We're coming. Where are you?”

 

“I'll be at the Super Mart.”

 

“Super Mart? How the fuck did you get way out there?”

 

“That's questions too.”

 

“Right. Okay. We're still coming. Hang on.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

He wandered from the room and walked silently through halls and down a flight of stairs. As he made his way through the house he was assailed by questions from all angles.

 

'Hey, Jim, it's okay, right? It was a joke. Rob just likes dudes in bands. We thought you'd be into it.'

 

'Whoa, Jimmy, you mad?'

 

'Come on, come on, stay. It's all good.'

 

He left the house without saying a word though a few people called after him on the street. He wandered into the dark, occasionally lit by streetlamps.

 

 

 

 

 

Though the worst was over, Johnny still felt sick in the pit of his stomach and though he risked missing things he _wanted_ to see, he left the walls to walk. With the key on his neck and in his control, he easily walked out of nothing and into Hell itself. There was nothing there to comfort him because that wasn't the point of Hell, but it was distracting at least. It removed images from his head that he didn't like and replaced them with laughable petty garbage that was still easier to stomach.

 

The people there knew him. They didn't know his name, and they weren't friends, but they knew who he was. Some of them recognized him from direct experience, others just seemed to _know_. They gave him anything he desired, though without the need to eat or sleep or change clothes Johnny wanted very little that they could give him. He'd also learned that nothing there was real enough to take back with him to his walls. If he wanted to keep anything he was given, he'd have to stay in proper Hell.

 

The people tried to pull him in deeper, to older parts of Hell, to narrow alleys and twisted fire escapes. They didn't touch him, but they had a magnetic lure to them that he'd once felt from the thing that formally resided in his head. They'd almost distracted him a few times, almost taken him too far away from the walls that kept everyone he knew still within memory's reach. Maybe that had been the point, maybe that was what Pepito wanted. Go and get lost in Hell and forget these people while they forget you in seconds because you're not there watching things in real time.

 

 _There's a trap in this setup_ , he thought as he watched people crying over empty coffee cups. In order to make sure the others didn't get too far from him emotionally, he had to watch them from his place next to the walls. But that also meant he could never physically get any closer to them. Theoretically, if he _could_ break out, he'd have to do it away from the walls and risk them moving on before he made it. But the longer he watched them in real time, the longer Pepito kept Johnny where he wanted him – doing a job Pepito didn't want away from people who were going to get over him anyway.

 

Johnny stepped into an alley and walked from Hell into nothing just as he'd walked the other way. He had to get back to the walls, Pepito plot or not. The towering buildings and dumpsters around him were replaced by the black void loosely bordered by transparent rock that he'd become used to. The longer he 'lived' in the world, the more he saw of it. When he arrived, there was truly nothing, but as he'd been here his eyes adjusted like they used to adjust to just the simple dark. Now they were seeing the shapes, concepts, and worlds that swirled in nothing.

 

Not far from his walls, something clinked under his boot and he took a step back. He sparked up his lighter and crouched close to the ground. While Hell was covered in the kind of garbage expected of any city, Johnny had never run into anything in this part of the world but the discarded garbage humans that were dropped before him. A piece of dull metal caught just enough light to catch his eye and he reached down and turned it over between his fingertips. It was a small pendant with a tiny lens hooked to the loop on top of it.

 

There was a crop circle etched on the front.

 

_Edgar._

 

Johnny grabbed the discarded necklace and briefly clutched it against his chest, feeling that it was real, that it was there, that it wasn't some flotsam drifting in from Hell. He turned it over in his hands, more amazed to see it than any of the towering buildings or artificial sun in Hell. He pressed it into his palm and gazed upwards, but there was only black. No walls, no tunnel, no light so distant it looked like a star. Just a void. Still, even if he couldn't know exactly where it had come from, it meant there was a direct link between worlds if this trinket had made it through. It meant that Edgar had tried to connect to him.

 

Which meant even more that he was leaving.

 

He pocketed the necklace. He didn't know how yet, but he was going to return it to Edgar in person.

 

 

 

 

 

Someone was knocking at Edgar's door and he still did not care.

 

He should care. All the books and articles he'd read on healthy coping were telling him he was somehow supposed to start feeling 'better' several months after Johnny's death, that small things and people would be enjoyable again even if big things were still difficult. That little things would move forward. But nothing felt better and if anything was moving forward, it was not Edgar. Everything was still empty, pointless, filled with reminders and pain. 'If you are feeling hopeless,' the latest book suggested, 'talking with a therapist may help you process your feelings.'

 

“You four invisible assholes are fucked, though,” Edgar snapped at the book, kicking it under the couch with everything else that had upset him in the last six months.

 

Still at the door, still knocking.

 

He pulled himself to the door, ready to deliver whatever scathing remarks he could to the fans who had managed to find him or whatever dumb hat Tenna was wearing in an attempt to cheer him up this time.

 

He wasn't ready for Jimmy, though, so instead of scathing, he just stood blankly in the doorway.

 

“Hey,” Jimmy said.

 

“Hi.”

 

“I just, uh, wanted to see you.”

 

“Here I am.”

 

“And I guess wanted to see how you felt about shit.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “ _Like_ shit. So... the same.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Jimmy clicked his lip ring against his teeth and looked down at his feet. “Um, look, it's been … a _while_ , and I mean, I still feel really bad, but like, I kinda want to make it better and just sort shit out, so I kinda wondered if you were feeling the same way.”

 

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Edgar had hardly even processed Jimmy's words as sentences, let alone taken any meaning from them.

 

“I mean, I know it's not the same, but, like, I know you and you know me and we don't hate each other, and we both are missing a _thing, so_ I wondered if maybe you were... up for stuff.”

 

“Stuff?” He didn't know why he bothered asking. There was no reason to clarify. Whatever it was, he wasn't up for it. He was barely up for breathing.

 

“I just thought maybe you were lonely like me. Like we could both use the distraction. I miss him, and I thought maybe I'd feel better with you.”

 

“I don't know how I could help.”

 

“I mean, maybe it's better to do this sort of stuff _together_.”

 

Jimmy took a step forward and took hold of Edgar's hand.

 

Edgar jumped at the sudden contact. “Um, wait a sec – ”

 

Jimmy kissed Edgar with a desperation he didn't show any traces of trying to hide. Johnny had never done this, kissing Johnny was never like an invasion or filled with an overwhelming need. The metal ring in Jimmy's lip made the sensation even more alarming, even more _not Johnny._ Edgar shoved against Jimmy's ribs as hard as he was able and pulled away from him, horrified. Jimmy stumbled backwards, nearly tripping into Edgar's yard, wide-eyed, words falling out of him.

 

“Wait, wait, please! I'm sorry, just listen – !”

 

“What the hell was that?!” Edgar wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. Terrified, dizzy, slightly sick, his skin burned where Jimmy had touched him and he finally understood all the times Johnny had talked of wanting to scrape his own skin off in response to physical contact. There'd been a time when Edgar had hoped that the only person he'd ever kiss would be Johnny, and a time when he felt very comfortable in being certain of it. Now he had this.

 

Jimmy sniffled, pleading and desperate. “I just thought maybe we could – ”

 

“What is wrong with you?!”

 

“Everything, I guess! People I thought liked me were using me because I'm a fucking _idiot_ and the people who _do_ like me won't even choose me over a dead person!”

 

“Oh my god, Jimmy.” Edgar rubbed his eyes and tried to think straight, tried to think of anything but kiss, _kiss_ , _**kiss.**_ “God, you can't just show up and do this!”

 

Jimmy stepped forward again and tried to reach out. His eyes teared up when Edgar pulled away from him. “Please, come on, please. Just think about it. Or don't, that's probably better. I'd love to just not think for a while. I miss him, I know you miss him too. Maybe we can just make each other think about something else for a while.”

 

“Why are you doing this?”

 

“Because you're you, and I know you're _good_ and you're not gonna _fuck_ with me. I thought maybe you hadn't ever _done_ things because Nny was so 'blarg' about us even touching him, let alone trying anything and, and I thought maybe with _me_ , you could–”

 

“Jimmy, no. This is – this is fucked up.”

 

“It's not!” Jimmy cried. “People do this on TV all the time! I know you've seen that! The do it in real life too! I've seen it! What's fucked up is that you've been here alone for months and you hardly talk to us! Do you want me to pretend to be him or something? Let me try, okay? Close your eyes, it could just be like – ”

 

Edgar put his face in his hands. “Ohmygod, oh my god, stop. Stop. Please, this is horrible.”

 

Jimmy took advantage of him not looking and threw his arms around Edgar's shoulders. The last time Edgar had been hugged was the day Johnny died.

 

The impulse was terrible and misguided and horrifying, but Jimmy's frantic attempts at connecting with Edgar had reminded him that he'd once been connected to other things at all. He relaxed somewhat and pulled his hands from his eyes. Jimmy blinked back at him, his eyelids already red and puffy.

 

“Please,” he said.

 

Edgar looked away from him, but didn't push. “No. I'm sorry. This is too soon, and too weird. I can't do what – _any_ of what you want, I can't.” He exhaled slowly and looked back at Jimmy's trembling expression. “But you can come in.”

 

He stepped away from Jimmy and into the house. Jimmy followed cautiously after him.

 

“Excuse the mess,” said the remnant of Edgar who'd once cared about such things.

 

“I don't care,” Jimmy said.

 

Edgar sank into his usual spot in the living room and let Jimmy sit on the couch with him. They kicked books and dishes out of the way and settled into watching something long and engrossing on TV.

 

“I kind of thought I could run from it,” Jimmy said during a commercial.

 

“It catches up.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Jimmy inched closer and closer as the movie continued and Edgar didn't stop him.

 

“I tried to see my friends,” Jimmy said quietly. He didn't even wait for a commercial.

 

“I assume you don't mean Devi and Tenna. Did it help?”

 

“They got paid to leave me in a room with a guy who wanted me to pay for a tattoo by sleeping with him.”

 

“What the fuck?”

 

“I think I would have done it if I hadn't heard they got paid to bring me to him.”

 

“Why?”

 

Jimmy shrugged. “Feeling something? Nothing else to do. But he didn't want me after all because Nny is dead.” He laughed bitterly. “It's always Nny, isn't it?”

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

They didn't speak for another hour. Edgar felt himself falling asleep on the couch again, and Jimmy was not far behind him, sagging into Edgar's shoulder.

 

Edgar should have pushed him away, should have sent him home. But it had been a while since there was another person even in the house.

 

“I think sometimes I'll just, like, wake up,” Jimmy said into Edgar's shirt. Neither of them questioned the long pauses in their 'conversation', they just started and stopped when they needed to.

 

“Me too. And the longer it goes on, the more I keep re-realizing it. Every day I look around and think, 'This again? For the rest of my life?'”

 

Jimmy nodded, squishing his cheek against Edgar's shoulder. “I thought I would miss him less if I had you.”

 

“I don't think it works that way.”

 

“Some people say it does.” Jimmy slid closer to him, pressing them together.

 

“I can't, okay? It's too much, it's too early, it's... I don't know.” _Wrong_ ? _Weird? Betrayal?_

 

“It's okay,” Jimmy said. “I get it.”

 

“I don't think you do.”

 

They sat again in silence, watching the credits of some theatrical epic airing in the middle of the night. Edgar still could have drifted to sleep, even with Jimmy clinging desperately to him. That had apparently been Jimmy's plan.

 

“Can I still stay?” Jimmy asked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Do you think maybe it won't be too early someday?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

The idea terrified him, though it seemed practical. He was alone now. Jimmy had always been alone. With Johnny gone, and Devi and Tenna somewhat inevitable, they were each other's only option and Jimmy had apparently been interested for a long time. Logical, Edgar supposed.

 

But it was really too early. He couldn't conceive of a time when it wouldn't be. He couldn't imagine he'd ever want to give up so completely that he'd choose someone else. He couldn't imagine wanting anyone else to be that close to him, wanting to be that close to anyone else. There was no one who could make him as happy as Johnny did and no one he wanted to make happy as much as Johnny. He still sometimes thought it could all be fake, it could all be dream, it could all be a test. And then he'd wake up or turn around or outlast some kind of timer and there Johnny would be and everything would be okay because he hadn't horrified and hurt Johnny by accepting Jimmy's invitations for 'stuff.'

 

But he still fell asleep half-tangled up with Jimmy, who had come here seeking comfort because of how desperately they both missed someone else.

 

 

 

 

 

_Did I really have to see all that?_

 

Were the walls conspiring to make sure Johnny saw only the worst possible things? Jimmy has someone try to force themselves on him, so he turns around and tries it on Edgar? Were these walls designed to show him things that would hurt the most? Deep in some crevice of his heart, he hated that he was the kind of person who could now consider 'seeing your partner with someone else' a thing that would hurt enough to be shown to him in Hell.

 

Not that that had happened. Edgar had refused Jimmy. Several times. But it twisted something in Johnny, spurred something forward. If he was going to get out, he had to do it before Edgar got better, or gave up, whichever it was. If Johnny came back years later instead of just months, the others may not want him anymore. Edgar may have decided Jimmy was a better choice after all. There was no food in him to cause it, but he felt like throwing up.

 

Jimmy didn't stay long, and Edgar didn't let him do anything. The next morning, Jimmy brought Edgar toast and sat next to him.

 

“I came to see you to try to make what the tattoo people did to me better.”

 

“What?”

 

“I kinda thought if I just replaced the images in my head with you, it would go away. If it was _you_ doing stuff to me instead of this guy.”

 

“You thought you'd make me into some asshole who grabbed you?”

 

“No, it's not like that. I thought you'd be nice about it. I thought I could just overwrite a bad experience if I had a good one fast enough.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“I don't know.” He looked up from his toast. “Are you sure you won't? Maybe we could just try a kiss?”

 

“You tried that already. I'm sorry that shit happened to you, but no.”

 

“Come on, who else is going to help me? It doesn't have to mean anything, just one real kiss and I'll leave you alone.”

 

“You need to leave me alone about it _now.”_

 

Jimmy leaned toward Edgar with what honestly could have been an attempt to plead from a better angle and not an attempt to force another kiss, but that snapped whatever kindness Edgar had left for him. He ordered Jimmy out of the house with authoritarian confidence, slammed the door behind him, and then collapsed against the door and sank to the floor. Johnny had never had a sensation like being proud, relieved, and horrified at the same time, but here it was.

 

“What is wrong with me?” Edgar asked the empty room.

 

_Nothing._

 

Back on another wall, Jimmy stumbled out onto the sidewalk clutching at himself in a frantic despair. He'd lost the tattoo people before coming to Edgar, and thanks to his phenomenal problems with boundaries and timing, he seemed to think he'd lost Edgar too.

 

Jimmy walked to Devi's and cried, though Devi and Tenna had a hard time discerning what had happened because they still weren't allowed to ask questions. When he was finally calm enough to be able to tell them what had happened both with Edgar and the tattoo people, he refused to. Tenna sent him home with a Freeze Pop for lack of anything better to offer.

 

“I don't know what we're going to do,” Tenna said as she watched Jimmy walking home through a window.

 

“Just what we're doing, I guess.” Devi shrugged and pulled her legs up on the couch. “There's nothing else we can do.”

 

“What if we just fall apart?”

 

“How? It's just us.”

 

“What if something happens to Edgar?”

 

Devi bit her lip and took a long steady breath. “I don't know. I'm still fucked up about it too, but he seems... really bad.”

 

“Dev, I didn't talk to Nny before he died,” Tenna said suddenly.

 

“What?”

 

“After the thing with the house, I was so scared of everything. I was scared of _him._ I didn't think I could go and see him and when you went and I just talked to Edgar and I thought, 'It's okay, I'll talk to him next time,' and now there isn't a next time. The last time I talked to him it wasn't even him.”

 

“Oh, shit, Ten, it's okay. It's not like you knew.”

 

Tenna wiped her eyes with the side of her hand. “I just should have tried harder to trust him.”

 

“It's okay, he didn't exactly make it easy.”

 

The words didn't sting, exactly, but Johnny felt them somewhere under his ribs.

 

Tenna joined Devi on the couch and curled into her, wrapping Devi's arm around her shoulders like a human blanket. Devi let her, hugged her.

 

Tenna sniffed and grabbed a tissue from one of the many boxes strewn about their living room. “I didn't think I fit here for so long,” she said. “Like the second he died I thought, 'This is because I didn't believe everything, this is because I didn't remember'.”

 

“Jesus, Ten.”

 

“I know! I know! But I always thought – I thought, 'Was there something wrong with _me'?”_

 

“I thought the same thing. Like no one else saw that there was crazy shit happening, like Edgar and Jimmy just thought it was all great. Nny could have said, 'I want to try to build a bomb' and they would have done it with no questions.”

 

“I liked Nny,” Tenna sniffed. “I was afraid, but like, we were friends and now it's just me and I didn't get to make things okay or sort shit out. It wasn't unreasonable, right?! To just need more time?”

 

“Of fucking course not!” She shifted on the couch and Tenna slid against her chest. “Everything was weird with Nny. Edgar was fucking _dating_ him with all the shit he knew and remembered and all of Nny's particular bullshit and his relationship with him was probably the least complicated of any of us.”

 

“Ha.”

 

“I didn't know how to feel about him for the last few months. I didn't know how to feel about anything. Were we friends? Were we siblings? Should we have been something else? Could I trust fucking anything that came out of his mouth? I still don't know, and I have this... this hanging thread of not knowing. And it's just going to be like that forever. I don't know what to do with that. The last real shit I said to him was wondering why we weren't a thing or screaming at some other version of him to shut his brain down. But listen, I don't think he'd blame you. I think he was afraid too.”

 

“Of himself?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Johnny almost turned from the wall, but Tenna ended the small silence that settled between them.

 

“What if I died tomorrow?”

 

“Whoa, whoa, don't say shit like that!”

 

“I mean it, what if I just kicked it tomorrow? What would you do?”

 

“I'd be fucked up!”

 

“Would you miss me?”

 

“Of course! What are you--?”

 

“Would you regret anything?”

 

“I – think so? Fuck, you know where to strike, don't you?”

 

“It's not a joke.”

 

“I know, sorry, I'm just – it's been a while since I've kissed a girl.”

 

“I never have.”

 

“So... we could work on that.”

 

“Tomorrow,” Tenna said. “After I don't die.”

 

“...Okay.”

 

 

 

 

Some part of Edgar kept him from disconnecting entirely. Maybe he wouldn't answer every phone call or knock at the door, but the part of him that had once been okay and had preached to the others about how they needed each other made sure he answered just enough.

 

Today, it was a ringing phone.

 

“Hello.”

 

“Hi, Edgar.” Tenna.

 

“What now?”

 

“Devi and I picked you up some groceries. You said the basement stopped, sooo...”

 

“Oh.”

 

“We wanted to come drop them off at least.”

 

“'At least'?”

 

“Devi has some stuff she wants to give you.”

 

“Something that isn't groceries?”

 

“Yeah. You wanna go for a walk with her or something? She thought it might be nice.”

 

 _Not really._ “I guess.”

 

“Is twenty minutes okay?”

 

Edgar shrugged and then remembered he was on a phone. “Yeah, that's fine.”

 

“Okay, great. We'll see you in twenty.”

 

Devi and Tenna gave him an extra five minutes and he still didn't feel human enough to be going outside _with_ people, but he let them in when they knocked and accepted hugs when they were offered and let them unload things into his kitchen and felt mostly nothing about any of it.

 

“Will you take a walk with me?” Devi asked when they'd finished with the groceries.

 

“What about Tenna?”

 

“I'm fine,” Tenna said. “I'll just be here making sure your house doesn't blow up. And also not causing it.”

 

He wanted to smile. He should have smiled. It still felt like so much effort. “Okay.”

 

Devi led the way down the street, up this block, around this one, until they stopped at the library. She sat down on the steps in front of it and invited him to sit with her.

 

“What are we doing here?”

 

“I thought this was a good neutral place. Not like your house and the school. Those are kind of thick with … stuff.”

 

“Everything has him all over it,” Edgar said. “There's nothing that doesn't feel blacker because he's not here.”

 

“Nothing without a memory attached,” Devi said.

 

“Yeah.”

 

She took a deep breath. “Well, listen. I brought something for you.”

 

Edgar's heart sank. “Oh, no. Please, no more clippings and things, I can't – The shit people are saying, I can't look at it.”

 

“No,” Devi said. “Not the news, not Dib's people. These are ours. Or mine. Or yours, I guess. Both of you.” She handed him an envelope and he took it, albeit reluctantly.

 

“Devi, I – ”

 

“Hey. Trust me.” She nudged his arm and he braced himself as he opened the flap. Devi quickly launched into context for what he was looking at. “I know how many photos you have that are from shows and the dumbass zine shit we did, so they're all just photos of him pretending to be the other guys. So I thought …” She smiled sadly and nodded at the pile of photos in his hand. “Go ahead, look.”

 

He'd never seen the photos before, and most he never even knew had been taken.

 

Johnny reading a book over Edgar's shoulder in the choir room with his arms wrapped around Edgar's neck and shoulders like a scarf.

 

Johnny riding Edgar's shoulders at the pool, fighting off the tower of Tenna and Jimmy with a pool noodle.

 

Johnny smiling at something Edgar was saying while the group ate at some highway rest stop picnic table.

 

Devi continued softly. “I thought you'd like some photos that were definitely Johnny who loved Edgar.”

 

The last photo suffered from some blow out of colors thanks to the flash, but showed Edgar and Johnny, still in Homicides makeup, sitting in the back of the van on the verge of a kiss.

 

“Oh.”

 

“That was right after he went all brain melty after the plane trip and you saved the day with fairy tale bullshit. He was so mad at me, but I kept it.”

 

Edgar tried to smile, and it worked this time, but he wasn't able to do it without tears. “Yeah, he was mad. I thought you'd deleted it because it was so close to when all that happened. Though I also thought you were mad at him at the time, so...”

 

“I didn't know what to do with it. I just kinda put the memory card away and let it be for a while. Just lately I started getting the idea that you could use it. Is it okay?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Thanks.” He'd wished himself back into the moments captured in photos so many times. Wishing he could back up even one step. Even just to that almost kiss in the van. Sure, they'd have to run through Johnny's house again, but the time they'd spent after had been so perfect. Maybe Edgar could prevent it this time, and they'd be fine, they'd just keep going forever the way Edgar always thought they would.

 

Devi sighed, leaned into her elbows as she braced them on her knees. “Good. I know he was really private about that shit, but considering how he was before you, he... really loved you.”

 

“It's weird to hear you say that.”

 

“Why?”

 

“It kinda felt like you guys were doing your best not to think about it. Just now is the first time anyone else has ever said that he loved me.”

 

She looked away and kicked at the sidewalk. “We were... It was weird for us. _Him_ of all people, you know? Nny used to tell us love was made up by greeting card companies, so that this happened to him and he just dove in like he did never stopped being weird to us.” She clicked her tongue. “Sorry. I know we weren't exactly encouraging.”

 

“No, not really.”

 

“He did, though. He loved the fuck out of you. He wanted it all weird and private, but he didn't give a fuck what the rest of us had to say about it either.”

 

Edgar smiled wistfully at the photo. “He really didn't. He didn't care what the rest of you thought about me from day one.”

 

“That's why we're all here. He just kind of collected us and made us like it.”

 

Without Johnny, there was no pin to hold the spokes. Would he be able to keep the others around without Johnny? “I don't know how I'm supposed to keep going. I keep doing daily things and just trying not to be in my own body. If I can make myself watch a movie or something, I might not think about it for an hour, but the second it's over, everything about him just comes rushing back in on me. I thought about just never doing anything but watching movies ever again so I wouldn't have time to think about him. Everything feels empty and like it's too much at the same time.”

 

“The rest of us are still here.”

 

“It's not the same.”

 

“Hey, you're not a replacement for Tenna either, but I still care about you.”

 

“I didn't mean I don't care, I just – ”

 

“I know.”

 

“It's just that, some days, I still want to go with him.”

 

“Oh. Oh, Edgar, no.”

 

“It's okay. I probably won't. I just haven't been able to shake the feeling that I could help him if I could just get down there.”

 

“Help? Edgar, he...”

 

“I know, I know.” The others were all so ready to accept that Johnny was gone, that he was dead, but parts of Edgar still refused to believe it. And those parts were so convinced that Edgar could still do _something,_ even if that something was just to stubbornly not let go. They were probably the same parts that ever answered the phone.

 

 

 

 

 

Temptation nagged at the back of Johnny's mind where his other selves used to be. It wasn't strong, but it was persistent. The idea of being there forever, of staying an immortal part of Hell and deciding who was worthy of what had an appeal. He needed nothing physically, but Hell could provide him anything he _wanted_ if he tried hard enough. In brief moments between watching the walls around him, he'd be lured by the idea ever so slightly...

 

Then a soft clink from tiny piece of metal in his pocket shocked him back to 'reality.' _Edgar._ The allure of being an immortal ruler of Hell vanished completely when he considered it would have to be without Edgar.

 

And the more Johnny watched Edgar the more he knew he had to get out. Watching Jimmy and Devi and Tenna was painful, but not in the same way. Devi and Tenna seemed to have needed Johnny's death to motivate them to define their relationship, and Jimmy accidentally used it to learn what kind of people his tattoo friends were. But Edgar hadn't learned anything but how long he could ignore using a razor. He'd functioned so well on his own before meeting Johnny and the others. Johnny's first day there, the house was spotless. Now some part of Edgar seemed to be dead along with Johnny and Johnny wouldn't have it anymore. He was getting out and going home.

 

Pepito could come and go easily, and if Johnny was meant to replace Pepito then Johnny should be able to do the same thing. Maybe he wasn't actually dead, maybe he was just in some kind of suspended animation. Maybe he could pretend enough that he was ready to take over and then Pepito might give him more freedom. It would require ignoring everything on Edgar's wall and embracing the work Pepito had given him to do, but if it meant getting back to Edgar sooner, he could do it.

 

Starting with the next mangled soul that dropped in on him, Johnny threw himself into the job like it was a performance. He greeted and banished the new arrivals with the same flair he'd used on stage. There were flourishes, smiles, false reassurances, motions timed carefully to the soundtrack in his head. Some of it was mimicking a show, some of it was mimicking Pepito. The voices of Hell whispered to him, 'Wouldn't this be fun forever?', and he dismissed them all.

 

_Fun forever is at home._

 

Pepito himself arrived when the flow of forfeited souls had abated somewhat.

 

“I thought I felt you having fun down here.”

 

_Just doing my job._

 

“And enjoying it?”

 

_Finding ways to make it work for me._

 

Pepito shook his head. “Good luck with that.”

 

_This was your job, wasn't it?_

 

“It was part of my father's, though I've been doing it for quite some time now. The perks have been nice, but I'm growing tired of everything else.”

 

_And you wanted the last version of me to do this instead of you._

 

“Well, you were most certainly coming here anyway, and I thought you looked like a good candidate. You didn't like people any more than I did. There were, of course, a few other factors. Things in your head and what not.”

 

_And 'what not.'_

 

Pepito shrugged.

 

_So what about these perks? When do I get to walk around the world of the living delivering vague wisdom like you?_

 

“Oh, no, no,” Pepito scolded. “You don't get to do that.”

 

_What? Why not? What's special about you?_

 

He laughed. “It's more like what's special about _you_. You have the key to this place, and we plan to keep it here.”

 

Johnny pressed the key to his collar bones. _Why don't you just take it off me?_

 

“It could be stolen. Lost. Fall into the wrong hands.”

 

 _So you attached a whole person to it? I'm a fucking_ _ keychain _ _?!_

 

“A keychain locked in a car with the keys that unlock the car, I suppose.”

 

_Holy – was anyone involved in bringing me to life in possession a brain? Or thoughts? Anything? This is unreal. This is – Pepito, this is stupid._

 

“I will remind you, once again, that I was not the person who tied that key to your neck.”

 

_Yeah, but you gave me a key that could do this in the first place! It would have stuck to me eventually, right?_

 

“You _did_ make it easy.”

 

_Why did I have to have this?_

 

“We needed you to die with it. Now it's properly bound down here, and with you _silent_ , it can't be used.”

 

Johnny put his hand to his throat. _This isn't so I can't sing?_

 

“No, though it's nice not to have to deal with that thing coming to visit us while it's unsecured too.”

 

He'd been getting used to having conversations with Pepito with just thoughts and notions that he'd almost stopped noticing his voice. With this sudden realization, however, he longed to scream, sing everything he knew, howl at the ceiling like some kind of animal. His throat felt tight, dry, _dead._

 

_Can we do something about this?_

 

“Um, no, this is preferable.”

 

_How many times am I likely to say my own name down here?_

 

“I've seen you talk to yourself. It's not worth the risk.”

 

_What is the risk? What happens?_

 

“Now that you're here? You open Hell the way I did when I was at my house with Squee. You destroy _everything_. Not just what's down here, but them too.” He gestured toward Johnny's walls, where his friends were coping and his boyfriend was not.

 

_So you think I'm protecting everyone by never being able to speak again._

 

“I know you are. The key is yours; it came to Hell with you, it died with you. I can no longer use it and, without your voice, neither can you.”

 

_You can't just reprogram it?  Make it respond to 'Dave' or 'Tiffany' or something._

 

“Can _you_ do that?”

 

_No?_

 

“Then it can't be done. The key is yours.”

 

_You can't just take it back?_

 

“There are things I could invoke, but why would I do that when it's safe just like this, hmm?”

 

_Why does it even have to do this?_

 

“A key is a key and it does what keys do – it unlocks. This one just uses a name instead of a turn. You can't remove the essence of being a key from a key and have it still be a key.”

 

_Fucking watch me._

 

“I look forward to watching you try.”

 

 

 

Days dragged but months flew. Before Edgar knew it, Johnny had been dead long enough that the rest of world was beginning to lose interest. He saw the Mysteries Mysteries segment less often. More important people had died or had babies or had some kind of scandal, and the news didn't have time for a dead singer from a haunted indie band anymore. But as August wound down, Edgar marked each day with more and more thoughts of Johnny.

 

_He would have been eighteen. If we were normal people, that would have been significant._

 

He'd spent every September first for the last few years doing something ridiculous and fun. Singing along to ancient records in the basement, faking a zombie invasion to give Johnny a swimming pool, bleeding in a restaurant to get free breakfast. This year, he wished the day would just never happen again.

 

Should he light candles? That didn't seem to fit Johnny.

 

Music made more sense, but Edgar hadn't been able to listen to anything since Johnny died. The last song he'd heard, the one he repeated in his head, the one that twisted its way into all his dreams, was Johnny's. He was desperate not to forget it and even though he'd recorded himself humming it and programmed parts of it into his keyboard before never touching the instrument again, he still clung to it like it leaving would erase Johnny.

 

He could go to the pool. Alone? With everyone else? The thought of going through Johnny's keys to get the ones for the pool tightened his ribs around his lungs and he wished himself back to the moment he stole them, the moment he was so excited for the potential to impress Johnny, for the potential to have everything he ended up getting.

 

Yet time kept cruelly moving forward, pushing him away from everything he loved and everything that felt right.

 

Johnny's birthday without Johnny did not feel right.

 

It hurt to go looking for the keys, but in the early evening when he realized what he wanted to do, what he felt he _should_ do, he had to go get them. Johnny had the smaller ring for the important keys once they started the Homicides, and everything Edgar needed would be on there. In the same box was one of the extra knives the basement had supplied when Johnny had briefly thought it would be fun to match them to his outfits.

 

He walked to the school first, and though it was hard to walk by the giant hole he got inside with little difficulty.

 

When he first met the others, they told him not to cut his hands to do this. They did too many things with art and music for it to be worth the healing time. But what was Edgar doing with his hands lately? It stung, but it always stung. Frankly, it was refreshing to feel something that wasn't just a dull feeling of loss.

 

He left the bloody smear across the two choir room doors as though sealing a tomb.

 

Down the hall, he fought with the pain in his hand and unfamiliarity with the key ring to get up the stairs to the bridge, and into the door that led to the roof.

 

He hadn't been here since before Johnny's death. The wind and the view used to liberate them and now it was limiting. Now it wasn't a magical other world, it was maintenance. Just the top of a building. An access point for air conditioning.

 

But it was still theirs.

 

Traces of rust red lingered on bits of the door frame that had been shaded from the elements. Some of that was Johnny.

 

Edgar added to it, held his hand against it no matter how much it stung. Maybe this would make these old dried parts of Johnny's blood part of him.

 

The vantage point gave him no better look into the depths of the black hole where Pepito's house had been, and with the magic of the roof gone with Johnny, Edgar didn't stay long. He locked the door behind him, took the stairs and stopped at a water fountain to run water over his hand. The stinging stopped for a moment, but returned as more blood welled up after the water.

 

It still didn't matter. He'd need the blood again.

 

His next stop was a longer walk, but he probably needed it.

 

He passed people who didn't know he was there, people who didn't know Johnny had ever been there. Couples and families and kids trying to scrape together a few more hours of summer. He crossed a bridge and laughed at himself when he thought about why people would ever jump off of one. Wanting to jump into a portal to Hell was far better, apparently. He passed an old video store, an ice cream place, a baseball field. Things made for other people but that he was occasionally able to steal.

 

Like the pool.

 

They were closing just as he arrived and he easily ducked through the gates in the front to pass by all the people leaving for the day. He sat at the corner of the shallow end and just watched the few people left at this hour. It was still difficult seeing people enjoy themselves where Johnny had once been, like they lacked reverence and not just the ability to see, know, or care.

 

His hand was irritated and would probably get infected considering all he'd done to it today, but it didn't matter much.

 

The drops of blood dripped into the pool and twisted into the bright blue until they faded into nothing.

 

“Happy birthday. I still miss you. It's not fair that I see you everywhere and in everything but you're still not here.”

 

 

 

 

 

_It's my birthday?_

 

_It's been that long for them already._

 

_Am I actually older now? Do you age when you're dead? If I go back do I have to push my birthday up a few months?_

 

_Not if. When. I'm going back._

 

He turned from Edgar's wall as Edgar quietly left the pool. This explained the others' behavior too. Jimmy was getting a new tattoo that looked like it was making him sad. Devi and Tenna were eating blue cake and cherries while Devi composed a strange new painting. Edgar's final act was a drop of blood in the hole that used to be Pepito's house. Johnny was tempted to go try to find the drop in the dirt near where he'd found the necklace, but it wasn't going to get him home any sooner and if Pepito wasn't lying, that drop could have landed anywhere.

 

Johnny turned completely from everyone else's observance of his eighteenth birthday and focused on the tiny world around him. The sooner he mastered this place, the sooner he could go home and worry about giving himself a new birth date.

 

Pepito could probably always see him, so whatever he attempted to learn ran the risk of being seen, but he still had to try. Maybe Johnny would get lucky. Maybe Pepito would find it all funny instead of threatening.

 

He'd been able to conjure a flashlight and a lighter since he arrived. Other things he occasionally had a desire for would appear when he wished. He'd given himself a chair to watch the others from, pens and inks to mar the floors around him, and things to smash only because he thought it would be funny. He'd never once considered food in the time he was here, but if he'd wanted a cherry Freezie, he had no doubt he'd feel the cold in his hands before he'd finished wishing it into being.

 

So it was time to test the limits.

 

He knew the first attempt wouldn't work, but then thought distantly that that was why it hadn't. Either way, he wasn't able to wish people there with him. He couldn't wish Edgar into Hell, no matter how much he wanted him there. Not that Edgar deserved Hell, but when Johnny considered what he'd been watching, actual Hell seemed better than Edgar's current life.

 

He conjured gold, but only to see if he could.

 

He tried to will up a fish, a cat, a ferret, any kind of small animal, but just like Edgar, they did not appear. Even plants failed to show up when he wished them.

 

_Nothing alive. What is it, they don't deserve this? Because neither do I._

 

He looked at the pile of gold at his feet and, just as easily as it had come, Johnny wished it away. He tried it over and over, disappearing and re-appearing random objects as the notion came to him.

 

 _So if I can't wish anything living to come_ _ here _ _..._

 

Hands clenched, Johnny concentrated on his own form. He bit his lip and squeezed his eyes closed and envisioned himself flying up out of that empty chasm he saw Edgar sit next to so often. He imagined just as clearly emerging in the middle of his house from nothing.

 

His head began to ache like it used to when the others pressed to escape. His skull could have cracked at the seams with the force building up. When he opened his eyes, the limited world in front of him smeared and glitched but it would not release him. He fought it, tried to force his will against that of Hell, but it showed no signs of giving in and threatened to tear him apart. Soon, Johnny was on his hands and knees, unable to continue.

 

The pain subsided, but the desire to leave did not.

 

_Don't think I won't try again. I'll figure this out._

 

 

 

The opportunity to figure it out came with the next person to drop into Johnny's pre-Hell. They were charming and funny and lacked the obvious signs of guilt the others had been so bad at hiding. Whoever this person was, they had been great at lying. Johnny let them talk and let them spin whatever stories they wanted. They were entertaining for now and eventually they'd betray something that would lead them down the spiral all the Hell-bound usually devolve into.

 

But this one went on and on with no end in sight. They weren't _boring –_ some of the stories were enjoyable despite the context of hearing them while dead and locked away from everything he knew – but the amount of time this person spent talking was incredible.

 

“I think that was the moment I decided I did not like seafood.”

 

There really seemed to be no guilt to betray.

 

“The amazing thing was that she opened the door and should have looked right at it, but didn't see anything.”

 

There was no nervousness.

 

“And then we said, 'Dude, what would you have done if he'd said yes?'”

 

Even the best liars had betrayed themselves, and everyone else who passed in front of Johnny had walked their own path to the inevitable question. This one needed no input from Johnny, just endless time.

 

Finally, hours or days or weeks later, Johnny stopped them mid sentence, just to see.

 

_What are you doing here?_

 

“Um, nothing.”

 

That question had undone the others. It had pulled them apart at the seams and exposed rotted insides. It had spilled their every misdeed like loose organs and gore. This one had kind of shrugged.

 

 _What are you doing here?_ Johnny tried again.

 

“I really don't think anything.”

 

_I don't think so either._

 

He closed his fingers around the key on his neck and rather than being swallowed by the floor, the person in front of him glitched into nothing. Johnny felt through the air for traces of them, but it had been no trick of the light or strategic mirror. They were just gone.

 

 _Key to Hell. But it means the key in_ and _the key out. The way out is the same as the way in: facing that question._

 

He could get out. There was enough here in what he'd heard, what he'd seen. He'd have to sort it out, he'd have to be _sure_ , he'd have to _believe,_ but there was a _way._ He reached into his pocket and pulled out Edgar's crop circle pendant. Nothing had changed about him, his physical surroundings, or the pendant itself, but he already felt like Edgar was closer just holding it.

 

And Johnny was definitely going to return it to him.

 

 

 

Johnny spent several of Edgar's days disposing of the newly deserving of Hell who dropped before him. He whisked them away with flair and relish, continuing to please Pepito with his apparent contentment with his job. He sent the last person for the day sailing into the city below with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, and awaited Pepito's visit as eagerly as possible. Behind him, Edgar's wall still projected a ticking reminder of what he might never see again, and yet when Pepito arrived, Johnny pretended not to notice it, resisted flinching when he heard Edgar cry or laugh or _anything_. He was pleasant, but not enough to be suspicious.

 

“Well, hello! What a productive day!”

 

_I was on a roll._

 

“How are you feeling?”

 

_Eh, I'm dead._

 

“True, true.” Pepito nodded knowingly. “But otherwise?”

 

_Not exactly feeling stimulated, but I'm coping._

 

“Oh, would you like something to read?” He conjured a small stack of paperback and presented them like a waiter with a silver platter. “It's Todd's collection. They're very good.”

 

_You can't just give me Squee's shit, what the fuck._

 

“No, no, I mean he wrote them.” He pulled one off the top and leafed through it fondly while the rest of the stack hovered in the air in front of him. “I think you're in some of these. You know.” He waved his free hand in a dismissive loop. “Loosely.”

 

Johnny took one of the books and blinked at the cover. 'Todd C.' had written something called 'The End' and here it was in real book form.

 

_This is one of the strangest things I've ever seen._

 

“That's not even the one about the aliens.”

 

_No, I mean... I can't really explain it, never mind. I'll take them. Tell Squee I said 'hi.'_

 

Pepito smiled and pressed his hands together as he stepped backward and gave Johnny a shallow bow. “With pleasure.”

 

Pepito vanished and the sick feeling Johnny had had while watching Jimmy and his tattoo people returned. This was good, this was a sign that what Johnny was planning would work the way he wanted it to, but it also made it much harder for Johnny to do it.

 

The headphones Pepito had provided began seeping some violin and Johnny willed it into the air around him without even thinking. It was all becoming so natural to him now and some of it he'd miss when he went back to Edgar's world. Not that any of it was worth trading, but they'd been perks, just as Pepito described them.

 

“ _I pirouette in the dark_

_I see the stars through a mirror”_

 

He hoped the books existed in Edgar's world too, and then immediately cursed himself for thinking of it as just Edgar's.

 

_It's my world too. I'm going back to it because I don't belong here._

 

“ _tired mechanical heart_

_beats till the song disappears”_

 

There were risks. Pepito had said even the tiniest doubt would kill Edgar if he attempted to jump into Hell, because Hell was belief and perception, not reality. Johnny probably wouldn't _die_ if he didn't believe one hundred percent that he did not belong and could leave, but what if he became nothing?

 

“ _somebody shine a light_

_I'm frozen by the fear in me”_

 

What if he wiped his own mind or glitched himself out of his body and ended up a brain in a jar? What if he merged with Hell and became the entire place personified?

 

_Stop it. That's not going to happen._

 

Then, supposing he made it out, the only bargaining chip Johnny had to get Pepito to return his life was going to test his convictions yet again and potentially make him someone who _did_ deserve to be in Hell.

 

“ _somebody make me feel alive and_

_shatter me”_

 

So he had one chance to do it. One chance to believe sincerely that he did not belong in Hell, one chance to threaten but not actually _do_ something that would condemn him there, one chance to gamble that the Anti-Christ was attached to something, one chance to get back the things he _did_ deserve.

 

“ _so cut me from the line_

_dizzy, spinning endlessly”_

 

If he'd been alive, his heart would have been pounding. He could feel its absence almost as keenly as he would have felt the nerves, but he was going to do this. Pepito wanted to be free of doing this job _and_ Pepito liked him so Johnny wasn't in danger from him if this didn't work. Pepito probably wouldn't obliterate his existence. So, if this went badly and he was caught before he had something to bargain with, he could probably try again later.

 

 

“ _somebody make me feel alive and”_

 

 

_When? A few weeks? Months? Decades? How long is that for Edgar?_

 

 _No._ There was no later. He had to do it _now._

 

“ _shatter me!”_

 

If he took too long doing it, Edgar and the others would start to really move on. Time would race in front of him and he may be too young, too long dead, too changed for them to want him.

 

He held the key tightly in his hand, eyes closed. He repeated what he knew about it like a mantra, a prayer. _The key is mine. I can change what it does, but it's always a key. Hell responds to our expectations. The rules are different here._

 

He swallowed, though the gesture was more habit than necessity.

 

As he opened his eyes, he released the key and looked at the world below him. _I'm in charge here. I have the key. I choose who to keep here and who goes elsewhere._

 

_This will work._

 

He'd no sooner considered the idea than the mirror appeared in front of him. It was the first time he'd seen himself since before his death and the first time in a very long time that he'd been the only one in the mirror. The coat looked good on him, and he thought distantly that he was going to miss a haircut that stayed this pristine for so long.

 

He looked at the person in the mirror and posed a question.

 

_What are you doing here?_

 

His mirror self was silent. His mirror self – _he_ – was doing nothing here. He did not belong here. And he knew where he _did_ belong.

 

He wrapped his fingers tightly around the key and world whipped out from under him like a rug.

 

“ _shatter me!”_

 

 

 

 

His weight redistributed itself, settling like he'd just climbed out of a pool, and he found himself in a cluttered kitchen. Convenient. Quickly, he began opening drawers, looking for the best item to get his point across. There was likely some sort of alarm going off in Hell right now and he'd only have a short time before Pepito guessed where he was and put a stop to his bargain before it began.

 

He found a knife lying among the wreckage of a plate-sized cookie and felt it in his hands. The others were no longer in his head, and yet they'd still taught him something of this. Of how to use this because of the way the weight fell, the way this would feel if he had to do it. At least he'd lived his whole real life without killing someone. He was part of Hell now, so this was either going to break him out, or do nothing at all to his damnation status.

 

Squee, or perhaps _Todd_ was more appropriate given the circumstances, was playing a game by himself in the other room. The game was still set for two players, as though Pepito had just walked away in the middle of it. Todd sat, bored, talking to half the screen half-heartedly.

 

“You need to stop hiding there, Pepito,” he said blandly, shooting the character on the left side of the screen. “I'm going to find you every time at this rate.”

 

 _He's been protecting you from Hell. So he'll protect you from_ _ me _ _, too._

 

He stepped into the room and tossed the knife once, hoping to get Todd's attention with the motion.

 

“Ah!” Todd jumped to his feet, though he did not run. “Pepito?” he asked, glancing around the room. “Pepito, that's not funny. You could have just said you were back!”

 

_I know you probably can't hear me and I guess you can't see me either, but I'm sorry this is you of all people. I used to stop people like me when you were younger._

 

Johnny lunged forward with the knife, sending Todd scrambling onto the couch. Todd felt frantically along the wall for something, but with a knife at his neck he was largely useless. Johnny stepped onto the couch with him, pressing the knife against Todd's skin. He drew no blood, but he would if Todd moved.

 

“Johnny?” Todd whispered.

 

_So you're not surprised. Maybe I don't feel bad about this after all._

 

A quick black smoke shot through the room and Pepito materialized on the floor in front of the couch. “Let him go.”

 

 _I don't think I will._ He did not turn to look at Pepito, just focused on keeping the knife just so.

 

“What do you think this will accomplish?” Pepito asked. He was trying to mask it, but some of his usual arrogance was missing. Good.

 

_This will give you what you deserve. Since Edgar and I losing each other is so amusing to you, I thought you'd like to give the feeling a try first hand._

 

“I can destroy you,” Pepito threatened.

 

_Can you now?_

 

Todd winced and tried to speak, but the knife wouldn't allow him even that much motion.

 

_It seems I'm the one with the key, Pepito. You know, the key you decided you couldn't handle anymore. I used it to do this, to come here. I don't believe you can do anything to me._

 

Johnny gripped the knife tighter, pushed slightly against Todd's skin and saw the slightest welling of blood. He turned to look at Pepito and pointed at him with his free hand. Like a performance, like delivering a song.

 

_You sent me here. You did this to me. You decided you couldn't handle a single piece of metal and didn't want to take over Daddy Satan's business. You thought this was a convenient way to take advantage of a situation you knew would ruin someone. And you wouldn't tell me a damn thing when I asked you._

 

“I've told you: I couldn't, I – ”

 

_I don't care!_

 

Under the knife, he felt Todd shaking.

 

_You pretended to give a damn, Pepito. You tried to warn me and Edgar and pretend you were worried about us, but in the end, you didn't care. You were still going to get what you wanted. You wanted to stay home with Squee and play games and eat cookies._

 

He looked at Todd again.

 

_I think I can understand that part._

 

Pepito took a step forward.

 

 _I also would have liked to stay home and enjoy someone's company with TV and shitty food, but I'm not ruining anyone's life over it! Oh wait!_ Johnny put his hand over his mouth in mock shock, looking back and forth between Pepito and Todd. _I guess I am._

 

“Stop,” Pepito said. “Just wait, let me – ”

 

_No. I really don't care. What difference does it make to me if this upsets you now that I know what I can do?_

 

“You can go!”

 

His resolve seized up in his chest as he tried not to lose the momentum he'd been building. _Put everything back,_ Johnny demanded. _I want it back the way it was before._

 

“Let Todd go, and you have it.”

 

_Swear it, or his neck stains your wallpaper and I make your undoubtedly long life very difficult._

 

Pepito spoke words Johnny didn't understand and there was something of a roar from under the floor. “It is Done,” he said. “Now let him down.”

 

_See, you could have just helped me from the start._

 

“I haven't helped anyone. Let him go.”

 

_I'm supposed to believe you just like that?_

 

“ _Feel it_!” Pepito hissed. “You have a heart beat again. It will be slow, but it will all come back by morning.”

 

There _was_ a heart beat. In his awe, Johnny dropped the knife from Todd's neck and Todd's crumpled down into the cushions, hands covering the cut on his neck.

 

“Now get out,” Pepito said. He flickered out and reappeared immediately front of Todd.

 

Johnny wrapped his fingers around the key at his neck and, rather than condemn someone, freed himself. The cord snapped when he pulled, like he believed it would, and he dropped it like garbage to the floor at Pepito's feet. “Gladly.”

 

“You should choose your words more carefully in the future,” Pepito said sweetly as Johnny ran to the front door of the house. “But do enjoy how things were 'before.'”

 

The second Johnny turned back to question it, the house vanished under his feet, and he was standing over the hole he'd seen Edgar contemplate all that time as though it were covered with a thick pane of glass.

 

_So maybe he never would have been able to throw himself down anyway._

 

The ground felt real, the air felt real. When he ran he nearly floated. The sensation he'd known for so long of the metal key hitting his neck was missing, and frankly the skin there felt a little naked. He passed Jimmy's trailer, and Tenna and Devi's house. Lights on. Hopefully still early enough that they would welcome him being back.

 

Though his priority was still further up the street.

 

There were no lights on in Edgar's house. Johnny got in through the back door attached to the kitchen where he and Edgar had once broken the lock trying to do some ridiculous experiment. There were dishes piled high in the sink, pots and pans in strange places. He knew it would look like this. He'd seen Edgar through that wall, after all, but it was a little different seeing it in real life.

 

Or real, at least. He wasn't exactly sure about 'life.'

 

He was home and Edgar was upstairs and rather than run there immediately, he went to the living room. This was either delaying something great or something traumatic, but he wasn't sure he was ready for either. Two minutes ago, he would have thought nothing could have distracted him and now he paused, just a little.

 

There were CDs scattered on the floor in the other rooms. Photos, papers, and magazines sat in piles on every flat surface. There were letters from people they didn't know expressing some sort of warped sympathy, and still others celebrating that Edgar had vanished from the public eye with Johnny to go and be secretly married.

 

The television was on. They were showing the Mysterious Mysteries special again. This was a good sign. Edgar and the others wouldn't have moved on completely if even TV hadn't totally forgotten him. Unless this was a late run from some network too slow to get on popular concepts and issues when they're relevant and Johnny's death was just embarrassingly old news now.

 

Fear and hesitation vanished and he took the stairs two at a time. He made no sound.

 

In the bedroom, Edgar was asleep but he was real and _right_ _there._

 

_Edgar!_

 

Still no voice. No sound at all. He reached out, tried to shake Edgar's shoulder, but jumped back in alarm as he passed right through him. He pressed his hands into the mattress. It was solid and real under his hands, but Edgar still eluded him. It had been like this with Todd too. No directly touching anything alive.

 

Frustrated, he found the remote for the television in Edgar's room and poked his shoulder with it. That made contact, that he could do.

 

Edgar made some displeased sounds, scratched his shoulder, swatted at nothing, pulled his blankets tighter, but didn't seem inclined to wake up.

 

_God, come on!_

 

Johnny's sketchbook sat on the bedside table. He'd missed it, and looked at it fondly before rummaging through everything on the table for a pen.

 

Edgar yelped a little when jabbed with the pen and sat up in bed. He looked right at Johnny.

 

_Hi!_

 

And then right through him.

 

“Fuck,” Edgar muttered, and then settled back down.

 

Johnny sat next to him, frustrated, and contemplated writing notes that would probably terrify Edgar so much their positions would reverse. The clock in the room flashed 12:00 and he had no way of communicating with Edgar until his body responded to whatever devil tricks Pepito had set up or Edgar properly woke up.

 

His sketchbook still sat next to him, so he opened it and felt again how right everything in the world was with even just a few strokes of a pen. This was all going to work. He'd believed it would work, and so it did. He was going to see Edgar again – or Edgar was going to see _him_ – in the morning. For now, unwilling to leave Edgar's side, he drew. He drew things he'd seen in Hell, he drew Edgar sleeping, he drew ideas for costumes and stage makeup he'd never wear again.

 

' _Hi, it's me, don't freak out! - <3 JC,' _he scribbled at the bottom of the page.

 

The world felt pleasant even sitting next to Edgar. Even though Edgar didn't know, even though Johnny wasn't solid or alive or something. Edgar just existing made most things better. For the first time he could remember, Johnny was _eager_ to touch another person.

 

At the first hint of sunrise, he felt solid settle into his fingers and elbows. He hadn't noticed the difference between how he'd been in Hell and being solid until that moment. The feeling was so _real_ he wondered how he'd never missed it. His heart was still beating, and the solid feeling spread through him like ink on wet paper. Maybe he was supposed to be breathing to get this working properly. He'd stopped doing that at some point, and now needed to rethink the process.

 

He concentrated on it while he watched Edgar frown against the light coming into his window. Half an hour after the process started, Johnny's breath returned in a way entirely unlike the way he was trying to mimic it and he choked on his first breath in the very same place where he'd once taken his last. He coughed several times, took one giant gasp, and then felt the return of more weight he hadn't realized had been missing, sensed things he hadn't noticed he'd lost.

 

Edgar stirred when he heard ( _heard!)_ the cough and opened his eyes.

 

“...god, now I'm seeing you even when I'm awake.”

 

And then Johnny exhaled and immediately remembered nothing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now you can all be mad at me for a different reason for a month, haha. Feel glad though that I decided to intersperse Edgar's suffering with Johnny rather than just do one straight chapter of Edgar and then one of Johnny like I'd originally planned! Deciding to do them together made this one enormous again, but I guess it deserves to be. This, like the last one, was only a fragment of a single chapter the first time around, and I think it's a much better monster this time around. Each of the segments of what was previously SWAN's 'Twentilogue' are chapters of their own this time around. They were sort of crying out for that kind of expansion in the original anyway - the breaks were so obvious - but I was committed to making it an even 20 chapters, so we got what we got. 
> 
> I was interested in Johnny getting himself out of Hell a little differently this time around, giving him more power and control but also a bit more weight to what he was doing. I also tried to be very honest with his and Edgar's feelings about their situations, rather than have them spew the kinds of things that are expected. People who die in media but are still *there* always want their partner to move on and find someone else. Johnny finds the mourning that happens for him to be just as affirming as it is distressing at first. And he's not interested in Edgar moving on and having someone else. Which is selfish, but honest.
> 
> It was difficult not to throw Edgar into that giant hole immediately. This time around, he's just tangled up in Johnny enough, just 'fuck fear' enough that he is now absolutely the sort to throw himself into a pit in that initial wave of emotion. I had to put some physical barriers there at first (Jimmy) and then build up emotional ones to keep him from throwing the whole story off, haha. One day, if I'm feeling ambitious, I should do an AU ending of Edgar jumping down and breaking out *with* Johnny, but Johnny's personal decision to go home because he wasn't willing to give up Edgar and wasn't interested in being Satan III was important to me as much as Johnny saving himself under his own power was. Just like he did in the house/hotel, really. 
> 
> Edgar's feelings of loss are ones I've had myself in various situations. I hope his and Johnny's reactions feel truer than, "Oh, I just want him to heal and move on!" and "He's in a better place now, he'd want me to find happiness without him!" Those have never felt like real life to me and I suspect I'm not alone in this considering how many of you made it this far. (Thank you, by the way?! This is such an intimidating amount of stuff to read, especially the way some of you are doing, without ever having read the source material! You're all fantastic.) 
> 
> I got to do more with the others coping with the experience of losing Johnny in this one, which I'd missed in the original. Or not coping. It's hard to tell with this group. They muddle through, anyway. Jimmy's shit is actually building to things for him, believe it or not. And I guess Devi and Tenna's thing is too, but theirs looks more obvious.
> 
> Devi's photo thing with Edgar comes back this time, but this time we've actually seen the moment caught in the photo, which felt nicer to me. I got to borrow a decent amount of dialog from that part, though it almost always has to be tweaked when I do that, just because the circumstances are different. I do like to scrape what I can from the first version, though. It kind of reinforces that it's the same story and keeps up a sense of continuity and connectedness for me. I also try not to force it. These kids are strong enough not to ever need cues from older selves, so if the old stuff just doesn't work for them anymore, it doesn't come over.
> 
> Incidentally, I am planning to remove the original version from AO3 this summer after I finish this story, so if you're interested in hoarding the old one for nostalgia purposes, you should download it soon. I'm no longer comfortable enough with everything in it to have it so readily available and associated with the work I do now, and while I considered going through and scraping off the bits that made me uncomfortable, I decided that was more effort than a fic that had already been totally rewritten from the ground up was worth. Eventually, the only place the original will be available is FF.N, and only then because the UI there is a straight up nightmare and I'm reluctant to lose all those stats and comments without a good way to back them up. 
> 
> Anyway, songs, as usual:  
> 
> Songs are only with Johnny in Hell. Edgar's life without Johnny is also without music.
> 
> Florence and the Machine - Seven Devils  
> Lindsey Stirling f. Lzzy Hale - Shatter Me
> 
> I'm already excited to see you again next month!


	27. without

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How much of who you are is in your memory?

 

Edgar was probably hallucinating, but Johnny looked so real, so  _here._

 

“People keep telling me this is going to get better. God, I would give anything for that to be you.”

 

“Uh...”

 

He pulled himself up and reached out if only to shake his brain into reality so it would stop its excessive cruelty.  When his hand hit a solid arm clad in leather and not more air, he startled backwards and the heat of tears built up in his eyes. “Oh my god, you're real.”

 

“I thiiiiink so,” Johnny answered, patting his ribs.

 

“Oh. Oh my god, oh my god, it's you!”

 

He shook so hard he had trouble guiding his limbs where he wanted them and then threw himself against Johnny. Johnny was real and solid and absolutely beautiful and not dead, not dead, so very not dead. “It's you, oh my god, it's you! Are you okay? How did you get back? What happened? Can you stay?”

 

But Johnny did not return the enthusiastic gesture. “Um, okay, look, can we talk about what I'm doing here? Because this is really freaking me out.”

 

Edgar grabbed his elbows and shook him in delirious excitement. “It's me, it's Edgar, look! And you're okay!”

 

“I – good? I don't remember not being okay.  I don't remember anything, actually, and this is really – can you let go?”

 

Edgar leaned away as his heart crashed into his guts. “You don't – oh no. Oh no, oh no.”

 

“Uh, sorry. I'm a little confused at the moment.  Can you tell me what this is about?”

 

Edgar swallowed, tried to focus. “Oh, no, please. You're kidding right? Right? Come on, this isn't funny. Please say you're kidding?”

 

Johnny shook his head. “No, afraid not. Sorry. I really don't know what's going on and I'm kind of freaked out. We know each other?”

 

“Oh, god,” Edgar said, running his hands down his face and pleading toward the ceiling. “Oh my god. Can I please be dreaming?”

 

“Once again: Sorry.”

 

“This has to be Pepito, this has to be a mistake, this has to be – this can't,  _I_ can't, oh god. Okay, okay.” He took several breaths with the hope of steadying himself, but had little success. “This is some kind of test, or some kind of torture, or ...” 

 

“I'm gonna guess that means we know each other.”

 

Edgar looked up at him and blinked away tears. “Yes.”

 

“Okay. And you're _Edgar,_ you said?”

 

He'd never been asked a question that stung so much, and the name didn't even sound right and _oh god_. “Yes. You really don't know?”

 

Maybe this was temporary. Maybe this was just a side effect of coming back to life. He just needed to reboot and then he'd start to remember in a few minutes.

 

“Sorry, no. This is your house?”

 

Edgar nodded, his head foggy.

 

“Do you know where I live?” Johnny asked. “Do you know who I am?”

 

“You – you're Nny, you're  _Johnny._ And you live  _here,_ ” He slid off the bed and tried to push the nausea down. Temporary. It had to be temporary. “Come on, I'll – ” His voice caught in this throat and he swallowed. “I'll show you, you'll remember.  You'll see.”

 

Johnny cautiously followed him, the long black coat trailing behind him. “So I live with you?”

 

Or maybe it wasn't Johnny. The idea tossed a stone into the sea of nausea in his stomach and he made a conscious effort to restrain the ripples it sent through his whole body. Maybe this was some kind of changeling, maybe it was a joke, maybe it was literally Pepito in Johnny's skin.

 

Edgar nodded as he led Johnny to his room. “Yeah. You live with me.”

 

“That's weird, but okay.”

 

“Why is it weird?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I guess it's weird when I don't know you.”

 

“It wasn't weird the first time you didn't know me,” Edgar said. It was tinged with some uncomfortable emotion. Bitterness or extreme loss or envy for a younger self. Back then, Johnny had scaled the steps and moved his things into this room on the first day they met, and he'd lived here next to Edgar, spent every day with him, from the day they met until the day Johnny died.

 

Edgar opened the door to Johnny's room and let it swing in. He held his hand on the door, but didn't go in. “Here, this is yours.”

 

Johnny peered inside, but he wouldn't cross the threshold either. “It looks like no one's lived in here for ages.”

 

“It's been cleaned,” Edgar lied.

 

Johnny regarded him with a skeptical glance. “And what, all my shit sold off or packaged?  Wouldn't I have had more stuff?”

 

“It's all in my room,” Edgar answered, though he regretted it the second he'd said it.

 

“Oookaaaay.”

 

“In my defense, you put it there.” Could he just say he was Johnny's boyfriend? Was that creepy? Would it scare him away? Would he go running off into town and get lost, never to be seen again because a strange guy he didn't know had said they were a couple minutes after they 'met'?

 

“If you say so,” Johnny said, though he still eyed Edgar suspiciously.

 

Edgar stepped into the room and pulled Johnny's keyring from the box Johnny had left at the foot of the bed. “Here, here, look at this.”

 

Johnny entered the room cautiously and he held out his hands. The keys fell into Johnny's palms with a clatter, but no recognition. “Keys,” he said. No question or curiosity, just a statement.

 

 _“Your_ keys. To the school. To everything. You know every one of these.”

 

“Oh.”

 

_Keys._

 

Edgar's gaze darted to Johnny's neck, but there was no key there, no cord, no pendant. That was a detail someone should have known to replicate if they were making a copy of Johnny. Could he really be a double? Some kind of fairy thing disguised as Johnny? Maybe fairies couldn't make copies of Hell keys. Could he really have lost it when he died? Did Pepito somehow decide to take it back? Edgar's thoughts raced and his skin burned like the itch was in his blood.

 

He looked pleadingly at Johnny, who was still turning the key ring around in his hands with only mild interest. “Don't you remember these? Or the one on your neck? Do you remember what happened to that?”

 

Johnny drew a hand to his neck, bewildered. “On my –? I'm not wearing one.”

 

“I guess not.” Edgar held his hand out for the keyring and Johnny handed it over. He placed it in the box gently.  _What if it is him but he never remembers? What if he turns into someone else and throws away all these things that were so important to him?_ He shook his head and gestured toward the stairs. “Let's try somewhere else, okay?”

 

Johnny did not remember the magic book, or the faded and worn horse painting he'd thrown on the neighbors' roof. He didn't remember making the painting hanging by the stairs, and he tripped on the third step from the bottom that he'd long ago learned to skip since he and Edgar had knocked it loose trying to move furniture. He didn't remember why the dining room set was a little wobbly or why they had one blender for art projects and one for food. He remembered nothing at all from before he died, and apparently nothing since.

 

“So where have I been?” Johnny asked as he took in the dining room. “It looks like kind of a war zone in here. Did I leave it this way?”

 

“No, it's been... difficult by myself.”

 

“How did I end up in your bed?” Johnny asked as he knelt to pick a CD from the floor. Wherever he'd been, Hell or not, they'd taken care of him. The black polish on his nails was flawless and his clothes fit better than any of the ones Edgar and Tenna had ever altered.

 

“I don't know. I woke up and you were there.”

 

“Where did I go? What happened to me?” He turned the CD over in his hands and looked into his reflection on the back as though he'd never seen it before.

 

“I – ” Edgar tried to find something good to say, tried to think if this would be the thing that damned him, but couldn't hold on to it. He dropped his hands to his side. “You died.”

 

“ _Died_ ? How?”

 

“I don't know.” Edgar shook his head, despairing. “I don't know, I've been trying to figure it out since it happened, you were here and then you weren't and – Sorry, just a minute.” He turned away, tried to press his tears back into his eyes.

 

“Sorry,” Johnny said. Edgar's Johnny had learned to be a little gentler in their time together, but this Johnny had apologized to Edgar more times in an hour than his Johnny might have done in weeks. Maybe it was the situation, but maybe it just wasn't Johnny.

 

“I'll be fine, sorry,” Edgar said, wiping his eyes with the sides of his hands. He tried to steer the conversation elsewhere, to things that stung at least a little less. “Did you recognize the CD?”

 

“Actually, I just saw my face. I had no idea what to expect. I'm kinda weird looking, but I think I'd like to see it better.”

 

“Was there... anything _particularly_ weird about it?”

 

Johnny pressed his fingers to his cheek, his jaw, his nose. “ _Is_ there something weird?”

 

“No, no, not like that. Nevermind.”

 

“Something I should remember?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

He could show him the mirror, he could let Johnny see that there were three of Edgar, but there was blood and horror in those faces and if Johnny wasn't going to remember Edgar then he shouldn't have to remember blood too. And if Johnny's reflections were gone, then the blood was gone. The version of Johnny the black thing had been chasing was gone. The Johnny who had known another Edgar and consumed countless Freezies with him to that point that Edgar had wanted to save him was gone.

 

And Edgar's Johnny was gone with them.

 

“Hey,” Johnny said. “Can I hang this coat somewhere?”

 

“Uh, yeah, just on the thing.” Edgar motioned to the coat tree that still contained all the various hoodies and jackets that he and Johnny couldn't ever be bothered to put on hangers. Until this moment, Edgar would never have believed that he could feel pain inspired by Johnny's lack of a knowledge of a coat tree, yet here was reality showing him otherwise.

 

The coat was absurdly perfect for Johnny and looked like it had been tailored for him in every detail. It gave Johnny a stronger presence than he had alone. He would have looked amazing performing in it.

 

“You definitely didn't leave with that coat,” Edgar said. “You got it … where ever you've been.”

 

“Oh. Weird.” Johnny whirled the coat off and some of his striking image went with it. He was smaller and frailer looking without the coat. The shirt underneath was new. And not just 'new to Johnny', but really _new._    Crisp and tightly sewn like he'd bought it in a department store instead of cobbling it together or stealing it from charity donations. More important than coat or shirt or newness was what was _old_. Johnny's wrist still bore the scar from his bathroom suicide attempt.

 

As Johnny flung the coat over the others on the rack, something jingled in the pockets. Johnny shoved his hand in to follow the sound and Edgar's heart nearly stopped when Johnny pulled out his own knife and Edgar's crop circle pendant.

 

“Oh my god.”

 

“Do you know what this stuff is?”

 

He took the pendant from Johnny's hand and looked at it in awe. It had survived being thrown into Hell and Edgar had been  _right_ about where Johnny was. He'd been down there and because Edgar hadn't been brave enough to chase him, he was standing in Edgar's living room with no memory.

 

“This is mine,” Edgar managed.

 

“Oh. Why did I have it?”

 

“You have to have found it after you left. I threw it down, I tried to get it to you...” This was hope, and he hadn't felt this in a long time. This had to be his Johnny who found the necklace and pocketed it. Sentiment or determination to get out or  _something_ . It would only mean something to  _his_ Johnny. 

 

“Oh, Edgar! Do you play?”

 

Johnny stood over Edgar's keyboard, where he'd pulled away the sheet Edgar had tossed over it months ago.

 

Edgar clutched the pendant tightly. “I used to.”

 

“Oh,” Johnny said, his shoulders sagging.

 

Maybe a song would do it? Of course a song would do it. Of course.

 

Edgar pressed the pendant into his hand once more and placed it on the table with purpose more fit for a talisman than a silly novelty necklace. Then he reached under the sheet where Johnny was sadly regarding the keys and tapped out some notes he was certain his Johnny knew. They were the first notes he'd played in nine months.

 

Johnny grinned – lopsided and cute – when Edgar produced five simple notes of 'I Love Belarus', but it wasn't recognition, and without that every note gouged pieces out of Edgar.

 

Edgar pulled away and tugged the sheet from Johnny's hands so it fell back over the keyboard. “Like I said: I used to.”

 

“What was wrong? It sounded good.”

 

“We'll just try the CDs, okay? You'll recognize those better.”

 

A song could probably still do it, but it would have to be one that came from the stereo. The keyboard just made Edgar hurt.

 

Edgar picked a CD off of the floor at random and slid it into the stereo. Johnny had done this for him the day they met and showed him the things he could hear, the things he knew without knowing.

 

_ “here is a song without a name” _

 

The living room behind them was littered with the fallout from Johnny's death. Photos, magazines, absurd letters. All of it things Edgar couldn't stand to look at and things he couldn't stand to get rid of.

 

Johnny approached a stack of photos like a moth to flame. He picked up a letter offering sympathies for his death and stared at it as though it had spoken to him. “Oh. Wow, I really did die, didn't I?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He turned the letter over. “Who is this from? Someone we know?”

 

“No, it's... they were a fan.”

 

“A  _fan_ ? Of what? Of  _me_ ?”

 

“Us, maybe,” Edgar said. “But probably mostly you.”

 

The lopsided smile was back as he flipped through the pile of mementos. “What was I – Oh. Wow, was I singing?”

 

Edgar sat on the couch. “Yeah.”

 

Johnny brought the photos close to his face and inspected them with eager enthusiasm. “These are so cool. Fuck, I need to remember this, this is great. Do you –?” He stopped when he made eye-contact with Edgar and all the enthusiasm drained from his face. “I'm why you don't play anymore.”

 

Edgar raised his eyebrows, looked away, and shrugged. “Something like that.”

 

“I didn't die on purpose, did I?”

 

“No.”

 

“Okay.” He put a handful of photos aside. “At least there's that.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

This was going to be so... complicated? Difficult? Horrible? This person had been once been his Johnny, and now there was nothing that made him Edgar's Johnny left. There were hundreds of things Edgar could try to use to make Johnny remember, but he was scared of feeding him the memories, scared that eventually Johnny would just be saying he remembered because he'd been told the same story so many times.

 

Would Devi and the others make him remember? Why wouldn't  _Edgar_ be able to if they could?

 

His stomach twisted.  _That is selfish and horrible._

 

“What now?” Johnny asked. “What else?”

 

“I don't know.” Edgar shook his head. “I'm sorry, I know that's all I'm saying, but you just don't get advice on this kind of thing, you know? I'm afraid I'm going to fuck something up and it won't be you anymore.”

 

“I'll be okay. Can we just try stuff? What about food? Food seems neutral. Do you _have_ food? I feel like I haven't eaten in months.”

 

Edgar rubbed his arm, tried to keep himself focused. “You probably haven't. Come on. I'll see if I have anything... Uh, excuse the mess.”

 

 

 

 

_“it comes to heal your pain_

_it comes with nothing else but love”_

 

 

Johnny discovered all over again that he liked his favorite foods. He grinned in surprise when he had cherry-flavored anything and tried hot sauce on any substance he thought would take it. He wanted to try the arts and crafts blender and was keen to open every door.

 

He tugged on the basement door, but couldn't budge it. “What's in here?”

 

“It's the basement.”

 

“Anything good down there?”

 

Edgar rinsed off a few of the enormous stack of dishes. “There used to be. Maybe with you back, it'll – ” He set a plate down in the water and it clanked against the other dishes in the sink. “Okay, listen. I don't know what to do here.”

 

“I know, it's fine.”

 

“I mean I don't want to start telling you things and then you just start to be familiar with the  _story_ of your memory without actually remembering and then I've just  _constructed_ you to my ideas or something.”

 

“I would prefer that too.”

 

The soap bubbles popped and fizzed and Edgar just watched them. What if this was it? What if Johnny never remembered? What if he had to start over? What if this Johnny turned out different? What if this Johnny didn't love him? He'd had that such a short time, he'd been elated to finally get to say it and hear it in return. What if this Johnny wanted Devi or Jimmy instead? What if they discovered that all that had made his Johnny want him was the shared past life memory?

 

Johnny tapped on the door to the basement. “Sooo, should I not go down there, or...?”

 

“I won't stop you. This is your house too. Go where you want.  You have to pull up on it.”

 

The door scraped and moaned against the linoleum floor as Johnny hauled it open. He glanced at Edgar once before vanishing down the creaky stairs.

 

Just as Johnny was deep into the black sea of boxes, Edgar's phone rang. This was either the people from Mysterious Mysteries again or one of his friends and he didn't know what to tell either of them. Even as he answered the phone, he had no plan, no feeling guiding what he might say.

 

 

_“no girls are dancing at my feet_

_no suits are here to meet_

_the phone is ringing but I'm gone”_

 

 

“Hello?”

 

“Oh,” Devi said. “I didn't think you'd answer.”

 

“I wasn't going to.”

 

“Oh. Well, good, I guess. Improvement or something.”

 

“What do you need?”

 

“Nothing, I just... hadn't heard from you in a bit, so I was calling.”

 

“I'm fine.”  _This would be the time to tell her Johnny is alive and just a blank slate._

 

“Do you need me and Jimmy to come help you move shit or anything?”

 

“No.”  _I probably have help now._

 

“Do you mind if I come over anyway?”

 

“I'd rather you didn't at the moment.”  _Because I'm scared he'll like you better and go home with you and I'm scared of what kind of person this makes me and I am just really fucking scared._

 

“Okay. I'll... check in on you in a few days, then.”

 

“You don't have to.”  _Please don't. Maybe this will just work out._

 

“Yeah, but I'm going to anyway.”

 

“Okay.” _Please do, I'm panicking._

 

Edgar hung up and hardly believed the things that had come out of his mouth. He stood with his hand on the receiver in mild horror. Was he really like this? Selfish enough to keep Johnny away from people who missed him while he hoped to make some positive impression on him? A version of Johnny that wasn't even  _his?_ Was he really going to do things like this while wanting Johnny back and terrified of what and how Johnny remembers at the same time?

 

_He said 'turn me off and fix me', once. I get it._

 

“Hey, Edgar?”

 

Edgar jumped and saw Johnny standing in the doorway to the kitchen.  His name still sounded so different coming from this Johnny. “Yes?”

 

“I found all my stuff in the basement.  Can we move it?”

 

“You know it's yours?” The hope in his voice was frankly embarrassing.

 

Johnny shrugged apologetically. “I just kind of assumed. It all looked like it was following a theme of 'shit I like and fit into.'  Is it actually yours?”

 

“Oh, it's not – I mean, it's probably yours, but we hadn't – God, I don't know have a good way to explain this to you. The basement used to just generate things for us. Things it thought would make you happy.”

 

Johnny nodded slowly, unblinking. “...I see.”

 

“It hasn't since – since you were gone.”

 

“Oh, shit, sorry.  What was doing it?”

 

“I don't know, actually. We stopped questioning it after a while. But I'll help you move things if you want them.” Even though the idea of Johnny developing attachments to new things while feeling nothing for his old things terrified Edgar in some twisted corner of his chest, he still agreed to do it.

 

Johnny looked at him and his lips twisted into something of a frown. “Nevermind. Maybe later. You look kinda like you aren't up for it.”

 

“I – Sorry.”

 

What Edgar actually looked like was a mess.  He hadn't bothered to shave in ages and he was still wearing the clothes he'd slept in.  His head was churning with 'what if' and 'why' and 'who.' He'd thought he'd long ago stopped being able to feel anything but empty and thus was surprised to find this nauseated hope and terror coursing through his veins.

 

“Do you mind if I go and just take a shower real quick?”

 

“Yeah, please.”

 

“Uh.”

 

Johnny laughed. “Sorry, I didn't mean it like that! You look tired as fuck, but you're not offensive or anything.”

 

The laugh wasn't quite right. It was Johnny, but it was missing _something._

 

“Look at whatever you want, okay? Like I said: It's your house too.”

 

“Okay.”  Johnny smiled awkwardly and that wasn't right either but Edgar left him to wander the house alone, fearing what he'd discover but hopeful that he'd be himself again by the time Edgar was finished with the shower. 

 

_ “ you take me higher than anything has before” _

 

 

The other faces stared blankly back at him while he inspected his overgrown face in the mirror.  He still didn't quite have the energy to care about fixing it and had frankly been nervous about razors for a while.  He didn't exactly have active desires to do anything with them, but he also had been doing a lo of things on wild whims since Johnny died.  Sometimes, seeing the faces of his other selves brought on the ideas. He'd died twice already without any terrible memories of the experience, just impressions.  Maybe, he'd thought while alone in the house, it wouldn't be that bad.  But then looking at the oldest face again usually ended the same thoughts it had started.

 

It hit Edgar all at once that Johnny would not have faces like this if he never remembered. There would never be violence staring back at him if Edgar did nothing to help him remember. Johnny could escape what had tortured him if Edgar didn't interfere. If Edgar just accepted the loss and they were all very careful, they could keep this Johnny healthier, stronger. He might even be able to sing!

 

If he even still wanted to.

 

The water made things easier. Gave him a task and just let his thoughts unravel. Under the rushing water, Edgar's song continued as it had for these last nine months – heavy, sagging, just barely keeping itself beyond a flat mumble. The first few months, he heard it turn sharp and then flutter into nothing like it had been shot every time something about the loss of Johnny had hit him, but now it was just dragging itself along, no longer being battered with everything from the outside, but grimly used to it.

 

Songs.

 

He'd tried 'I Love Belarus' on the keyboard, but what he should have been playing was the tune that had been weaving itself into his dreams, the last music he heard before the whole world went quiet, the only song that Johnny had never heard but in Edgar's poor humming rendition.

 

_If I play his song for him, he'll remember. It's like condensed Nny. Nothing else is more purely him._

 

It had to be that. It was obvious. Johnny had died hearing that song in the same place where he'd emerged with an empty memory. There was a symmetry there that would have pleased Pepito or whatever supernatural forces were responsible for this. 

 

He rushed through rinsing and nearly tumbled out of the shower in his excitement to play the song, to get everything he loved back, but as he pulled his towel around himself he caught his faces in the mirror again.

 

_If I do this, Johnny remembers these too and it will be_ _ me _ _that forced it on him. He'll remember everything that tortured him the whole time I knew him and it will be my fault. Do I have to tell him that remembering might be bad for him? What if he never wants to and –_

 

“Oh my god,” he said aloud. “This is insane.” 

 

Ducking into his room before his thoughts could ricochet in the other direction again, he suddenly saw the mess that he'd been living in for so long. Had it really been that bad before he got in the shower?

 

He hurried into his clothes and tried to appear composed when he emerged downstairs to find Johnny buried in his stacks of magazines.

 

“Hey, I'm a person again,” Edgar said.

 

Johnny looked up from one of the magazines the Homicides had taken photos for. “Yeah? Oh.  _Oh._ I thought, I thought you might – in the pictures, you...” He motioned to his own face. 

 

Edgar shrugged and looked away. “I just don't really feel like dealing with it lately.”

 

Johnny laughed. “Hey, do what you want. It's your head. I was just looking through all this.” Johnny held up the magazine. “You know, trying to remember.”

 

“And?”

 

“Nothing, but – damn, I want to. This is amazing, all of it. I haven't seen anything and thought, 'God, I hope I wasn't responsible for that garbage'.  It's all great, it's like being an orphan and then finding out you're a magical alien princess. Are we going to see Devi and Tenna and Jimmy?” He showed Edgar a photo of them as though Edgar needed the reference to know who they were.

 

“I don't know?” His voice squeaked a bit while his insides tried to mutiny. “I think they might be really fucked up seeing you like this. I don't know what to do.”

 

“I just thought they might help.”

 

He had no real excuse not to call them, not to tell them, not to have them try to help too. He was the one who had been telling everyone that they needed to take care of each other and here he was refusing care from Devi and refusing what might be care _for_ Johnny. He  _had_ to tell them, it made  _sense_ to tell them.

 

He had been so worried about the kind of men his past selves were, but if he kept Johnny from Devi and the others, he'd be the worst of them.  He just didn't know what was manipulation and what was helping and what was avoiding planting ideas and every decision felt like a bad one.

 

“We'll go see them,” Edgar said. “But let me call them first or something so the shock isn't so bad, okay?  If I just walk you over there there's going to be screaming and throwing things.”

 

“That's fair.” Johnny set the magazine in his lap. “Can I make an observation?”

 

Edgar winced. “Yeah?”

 

“This could be that I've got nothing in my head, but you seem more fucked up about all this than I am.”

 

He hung his head, tried to keep everything together, tried to stop having three hundred conflicting feelings at once. “You don't remember what you lost,” he said. He rubbed his arms and then just held them there in some kind of awkward self-hug. “So you don't have the same instinct to protect it.”

 

Johnny shrugged one shoulder. “I guess.”

 

"Are you  _not_ fucked up about it?" Edgar asked.

 

"I just said you were  _more._ It's relative."

 

They stood silent for several seconds while the guilt and fear and regret layered over each other in Edgar's chest.

 

Johnny exhaled slowly. “What happens if I don't remember?”

 

Edgar shook his head, bit his lip, squeezed his arms – anything to get rid of feeling of despair that washed over him at even the thought of Johnny never remembering him. “I'm not sure. I don't know what the best thing to do for you is.”

 

“I want to remember,” Johnny said.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Of course! Look at this shit!” He held up the magazine and shook it a little. It was opened to a photo of everyone covered in blacklight reactive paint splatter in addition to their normal blood and glitter. “I want all this again.  We look amazing.”

 

“What if – what if it's not all good like that?”

 

“I don't expect _everything_ to be. That's kind of normal, isn't it?”

 

“Yeah. But we're not normal. And this is sort of special case.”

 

“How?”

 

“I don't know how to – ” Edgar took a steadying breath and started again. “There were things that hurt you. Things you might...” He winced even thinking the words, but pressed on. “Things you might be better off without.”

 

“You can't be more specific than that?”

 

“I don't know. I'm a little afraid just saying it outright will trigger it or something.”

 

“Was there something wrong with me?”

 

“That's an okay way to put it,” Edgar said, picking up one of the magazines. “It's possible that even if you remember, we still won't be able to do all this again.”

 

“Oh.” Johnny looked sadly down at the pages across his lap. “Because of what was wrong with me?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And it's not wrong with me now?”

 

“No.”

 

“So it wasn't like cancer or anything?”

 

“No, it was tied to your memory.”

 

“Wow, okay. Uh, was it going to kill me or anything?”

 

“I don't know? I think it tried to once.” He let out a defeated sigh and shrugged. “Maybe it succeeded. I really don't know.”

 

“Oh. Okay.”

 

Edgar looked at him and desperately wished they didn't have to have this conversation. “Just okay?”

 

“I mean, I already died once, right? How bad can it be?”

 

“I'm tying to decide if there are worse things.”

 

 

 

 

 

_“you take me higher than anything has before”_

 

 

 

 

 

 

Devi picked up the phone already surprised and she hadn't even heard what Edgar had to tell her. No 'hello', just, “Edgar?”

 

“Hi,” Edgar said.

 

“Wow, hi. Are you okay?”

 

“Um, I'm not sure, honestly. But I need you to trust me for a second.”

 

“Annnnnnnnd  _done_ . That was nice and easy, that whole second.” It was something Tenna would say and, if this wasn't such a serious thing, he'd tease her about it.

 

“Devi, I mean it. I need to tell you this and I'm going to sound crazy, but I promise you I'm not.”

 

“Okay...?

 

He looked at Johnny sitting at the dining room table watching Edgar eagerly, and took a deep breath. “Johnny isn't dead.”

 

“Oh. God, Edgar, we talked to Dib about this stuff, you know we can't – ”

 

“Devi, I'm not making this up. He's in my dining room. He's here and I need you guys to come over.”

 

“You're scaring me.”

 

He held the phone out to Johnny. “Here, say something.”

 

Johnny blinked at the phone. “Uuuhh, _'something.'”_

 

Devi's voice shrieked from the receiver. “Edgar, what the fuck was that?!”

 

“Devi?” Johnny said. “I don't actually know what to say in this situation, but -”

 

“Edgar, this is fucked up, stop that!”

 

Edgar took the phone back when Devi's outburst startled Johnny into momentary silence. “I told you, it's him! Just come over. Bring Tenna and Jimmy. I'll show you.”

 

“Oh my god.”

 

And then there was a dial tone.

 

Edgar set the phone down, looked at Johnny, and shrugged. “I guess they want to be terrified first.”

 

 _“Great._ Do you want to do some kind of funny reveal? I could pretend to be a zombie or something. Can we dig a hole in the yard fast enough? Wait,” he craned his neck and tried to see through the curtained window in the dining room, “do we have a yard?”

 

“No, no, god, no we can't do that. That's funny, that's, that's very  _you_ , really, but Devi will also kill you again if we pull that. We can't do that to them.”

 

“Oh.” He frowned. “Do I even _like_ Devi? She doesn't sound like fun at all.”

 

“Yes, she just – I mean, I think you do. You seemed to?” He sighed. “I don't know, I always thought so, but you've always been kind of private and everything I say to you feels like feeding you information. I'm sorry, I just don't know what to do.”

 

“I don't either. Thanks for trying, though.”

 

“I hope that's what I'm doing.”

 

 

 

 

_“I waited hours for this”_

 

 

 

 

The knock on his door came twenty minutes later and Edgar's heart jumped to his throat. The others' songs reached out in all directions, scared, excited, confused, and trying to loop through his own. They still bore the scars they'd gained from Johnny's death, but they were still doing so much better than Edgar's song, which had become a bit of droning static.

 

He looked at Johnny as he went to answer the door.

 

“Do you hear anything?” he asked.

 

“You mean the knocking?”

 

“Other than that.”

 

While Edgar heard his friends songs screaming through the front door, Johnny shook his head, oblivious. “No. Should I?”

 

“In an ideal world, yeah.” He exhaled slowly. “It's okay, just... stay here for a minute.”

 

Devi's head bobbed in the window with Tenna and Jimmy behind her. “Edgar?! Don't make me break this door in!”

 

Edgar took a long breath and unlocked the door.

 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Devi demanded before he'd even opened the screen door.

 

“Devi, it's not – ”

 

“He'd be so fucking angry with you if he knew what shit you were pulling.”

 

“No, actually, I think, under the circumstances...” He sighed. “You should just come in.”

 

Jimmy had a bag with him that looked to be full of books. ' _So Your Friend Is Crazy: A Primer_ ' or ' _Why You Can't Stop Seeing Ghosts of Your Dead Partner_ ' perhaps.

 

They filed into the entry way and Edgar stopped them from going too far into the living room, where Johnny was supposed to be waiting. “There's not really a good way to prep you for this, but I thought I'd try to just – ”

 

“Hello!” Johnny said, ruining Edgar's attempt at prep by poking out from behind the pink recliner and waving.

 

First, there was screaming.

 

“Jesus Christ!” “Oh my god!” “Holy shit!”

 

Then there was panic.

 

“Edgar, what did you do?!” “Fuck, fuck, he's undead, oh my god, oh my god, I can't shoot him in the head! Don't make me!” “Are you kidding?!”

 

Johnny just watched it all happen, taking it in with a kind of enchanted amusement, and then the reactions started turning to anger.

 

Devi took several heavy steps toward him. “Is this really you? Where the hell have you been?!”

 

Edgar and Tenna scrambled after her and Edgar caught her arm. “Devi, no, wait!”

 

“Sorry,” Johnny said. “I don't remember.”

 

“Oh, that's convenient!” Tears built up in the corners of her eyes.

 

“It's the truth.”

 

“You don't remember where you were? Or you don't remember us?” Jimmy asked, leaning cautiously closer.

 

“I don't remember anything. We were hoping seeing you guys would help.”

 

Devi relaxed and Edgar let go of her arm. She stared at Johnny like some ancient trinket in a museum. “You – you don't know _us_?”

 

He shrugged. “Just from the magazines.”

 

“What about Edgar?” Tenna asked.

 

Johnny shook his head. “Nothing. I just woke up in his house.”

 

“Shit,” Jimmy whispered.

 

"That's a good joke!" Tenna laughed nervously.

 

"It's not," Edgar said.

 

Devi backed away from Johnny, hands over her mouth and nose, rapidly blinking away tears. She looked at Edgar. “Are you sure it's him?”

 

“He came back with my necklace. The one I threw in that hole.” He held up his own arm while nodding toward Johnny's. “He's got the scar.”

 

“He's also standing right here,” Johnny said, looking up from the scar on his wrist. “Can you guys not do that?”

 

Jimmy walked up to him and rolled up his sleeve. “Here, look at this.”

 

“Oh, hey, our stars!” Johnny said when Jimmy pulled up his sleeve enough to reveal the tattoo inside his elbow. “I saw those in the magazines.”

 

“Yeah. I wanted you to see  _this_ , though.” He turned his arm and showed Johnny a scar that scraped across his forearm. It was old, faded, and barely visible, but Jimmy traced it out for him. “Do you remember this scar? You did this.”

 

“No.”

 

“With scissors.”

 

Johnny shook his head.

 

“What the fuck happened?” Tenna asked.

 

Edgar explained Johnny just waking up in his bed, confused and empty, and talked about everything they'd tried so far. Food, songs, magazines, now friends.

 

“And the key's gone,” Tenna said.

 

Johnny felt his neck again, just as he had when Edgar mentioned it.

 

“Okay, maybe let's go somewhere,” Devi said. “What about the pool? Or the roof? You two were obsessed with that.”

 

“We'll have to figure out which key it is,” Edgar told her.

 

“Just have him – Oh, because he... doesn't remember which... right.”

 

“There's a roof?” Johnny asked. “You mean here?”

 

“The school,” Jimmy said.

 

“School? Okay, wait, how old are we?”

 

They all looked slowly back toward Edgar. “Do you age when you're dead?” Tenna asked.

 

Edgar pressed his palms into his eyes. “I don't _know_!”

 

“Eighteen,” Jimmy said firmly. “You're eighteen.”

 

“Okay, sure. You guys too?”

 

Devi exhaled slowly. “I'm nineteen.  So is Jimmy.  Tenna's nineteen next month.  Then Edgar a few months after that.  Your birthday was in September.  You're the youngest.”

 

He sighed. “Yeah, I feel like it.” As he spoke, he began pulling the gloves from his hands. “I might as well ask you guys how to fucking feed myself. This is really frustrating.” He glanced up the others, who were staring. “What?”

 

“I don't think I've seen your hands in a year or something,” Tenna said. “You never took those off.”

 

Johnny looked at his hands like he'd spilled something on them. “Oh. Sorry?”

 

“Fuck,” Devi muttered into her hand. “What do we do?”

 

“Maybe we should just start teaching him,” Tenna said.

 

Edgar nearly jumped on her. “No!”

 

“Whoa, whoa, okay.”

 

“I just... I just don't want him to be fake. I want him to remember, not recite. Let's just try taking him places.”

 

 

_“and now I watch it fade”_

 

 

 

Jimmy led the group eagerly down the street, frequently reaching for Johnny's unoffered hand.

 

“It's just down here,” he said, “come on, come on.”

 

Johnny walked along behind him. “I'm coming, this is literally me walking behind you.”

 

Having the others there helped Edgar see how much of his Johnny was actually still there.  Initially, Edgar thought everything he loved was gone, but if he stepped back, he could see better.  Johnny should have been totally blank, but his first reactions to things had been mostly right. He wanted to be a zombie to meet Devi and the others, he had no fear of supernatural bullshit, and was ready to snap and snark at the others in the same ways he always had.  These people were new to him, but he still had the personality that would have been able to convince them all to follow him.  What he'd just said to Jimmy was _him_ , was the core of him, even if the details were missing.

 

They crossed the street into Jimmy's parking lot and he gestured hopefully at his trailer. “See? Remember this? You helped me steal it.”

 

“I'm apparently good at stealing shit,” Johnny said. He shook his head as he looked at the trailer.

 

"You're the best," Jimmy said.  "At all sorts of shit!  Look, here, check out this generator!"

 

He pulled Johnny around to the side of the trailer where the tiny generator that let him exist in a parking lot chugged brokenly onward. "We got this together, we learned how to hook it up!"

 

"That's awesome, but it all looks new to me.”

 

“But you bled on it with us,” Jimmy said, almost begging.

 

Johnny took a step back and held onto his elbows as he drew his shoulders in. “Sorry.”

 

Everything in Edgar screamed to respond to what he'd been conditioned to see as a gesture of distress. Maybe this was too much, maybe they were hurting him, maybe forcing it would upset him and he'd hate them all, maybe maybe _maybe_.

 

“It's okay,” Tenna said in a flurry of forced optimism. “Let's try the van!”

 

So Tenna took the lead and Johnny followed her, minus his distress call posture.

 

Jimmy hung toward the back and walked just in front of Edgar.

 

“Look,” Jimmy said softly, “I know you're probably still kind of pissed at me, but I'm sorry.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Um, is it okay?”

 

“It's not okay.  But we are.”

 

“Oh. O...kay.”

 

Jimmy walked along looking longingly at Johnny before he asked quietly, “What if he doesn't like us?”

 

“I don't know. I've been thinking a lot about that. I'm sure he's thinking about it too.”

 

“What if he ...changes his mind about things?”

 

“That hadn't escaped me either, thanks.”

 

Jimmy clicked his lip ring against his teeth. “Sorry.”

 

In front of Devi and Tenna's house, Tenna did an about face in front of the van and spread her arms. “Here we are!”

 

“Well, this definitely looks like ours,” Johnny said. When the others leaned closer in hopeful anticipation, he clarified, “The style matches the magazines.”

 

“You _did_ a lot of this,” Devi said.

 

“I assumed so, but I don't remember any of it.”

 

“Do you remember how to paint?” Devi asked, suddenly frantic.

 

Johnny blinked. “I – I don't know. I hadn't thought about it until now. I guess I'd have to try.”

 

She patted her pockets, looked around frantically, and then took the van keys from Tenna's pocket. “Hang on.”

 

"Yeah, sure," Tenna deadpanned as Devi vanished inside the van.  "Use my keys.  Here.  My pocket is your pocket."

 

When Devi emerged from the back of the van, she had one of Johnny's notebooks. She flipped it open to a back page and thrust it into his arms. He glanced nervously between her hands and her face.

 

“Is this mine?” he asked.

 

“And his.” She nodded to Edgar. “You guys talked to each other in here doing some cutesy private bullshit, whatever. There's a pen,” she said, flapping her hand at the book, “draw something.”

 

“Uh, okay?” He clicked the pen and stared at the page. “What should I draw?”

 

Devi reacted as though she'd been hit. “What do you mean?”

 

“I just don't know what to make.”

 

“It's okay,” Tenna said to Devi, patting her shoulder. “Maybe no memory just means there's no angst to use as inspiration.” She looked at Johnny. “Draw one of us.”

 

“Okay, sure. I'll draw Devi.”

 

She looked startled to hear her name and Edgar tried to suppress an uncomfortable jealousy that Johnny hadn't chosen the first person he met since waking up and the person who he'd had to trust completely since this point. It didn't mean anything, he told himself. His Johnny could have just as easily done the same thing because Devi was always his painting buddy. It was fine. It might even be good.

 

Johnny braced the notebook against the van and had no trouble starting to draw. Probably a good sign. The others peered over his shoulder as he drew a worried and scared Devi and when he stopped he had a drawing that looked like an extremely meticulous imitation of Johnny's work, but it was lacking the right _feeling_ as well as Johnny's usual swirls, extra eyes,and erratic black ink.

 

“Well, you didn't forget _that_ ,” Devi said, her voice snagging on her feelings. “Not totally.  That's a good sign.”

 

“It feels more like my hands remember how to do it than my head,” Johnny said, narrowing his eyes at the drawing. “Like this didn't come from me.”

 

“Then at least we know you're probably really you,” Edgar said.

 

Jimmy nodded eagerly. “Yeah, if you still have muscle memory, they're probably still _your_ muscles.”

 

Johnny looked at one hand, turning it over, flexing his fingers. “They... they already _feel_ like mine.”

 

“We meant real you,” Tenna said.

 

Johnny rubbed his arm and nodded. “Right. Real me.”

 

 

_“this moment that we share_

_will always, always slip away”_

 

 

The 24/7 did not inspire memory but this Johnny, like seemingly every Johnny before him, really loved cherry Freezies.

 

He knew nothing about any of the photos Devi had on her memory card, and he didn't know the phone number to his stolen cell phone.

 

He did not remember the spot where he'd met Devi, and he'd forgotten to bring the keys with him, so they couldn't enter the school. Not that he remembered what it looked like or which keys went to which doors.

 

Months after Johnny's death, even with him no longer actually dead, Edgar found he could still feel the sting of the loss of Johnny roughly every block and a half. The only comfort the day offered him after a montage of seeing just how much he'd lost was that Johnny still wanted to go home with him, despite offers from everyone else.

 

 

 

 

That night, alone and shaking with a sick feeling inside, Edgar tried to calm himself enough to sleep.  He told himself it would be okay, it would work out.  That maybe Johnny just needed to sleep a bit. That maybe this would take a few days, but by next week Johnny would be in the room with him and they'd be happy together and laughing at how funny it was that time Johnny couldn't even remember the person he loved.

 

He took Johnny's sketchbook off the side table, aching for tangible expression from his own Johnny. There was a pen jammed into the pages, holding a place, though Edgar didn't remember putting one there. Edgar opened the marked pages and took a sharp breath. These drawings were _new._ Edgar knew every page of the book. He'd spent several hours with it at a time in the last few months, imagining every gesture used to create the images, and remembering where he and Johnny were when several of them had been drawn.  Yet he was certain he'd never seen these particular images. The swirling monsters Johnny had been drawing before he died were expanded. There were new Homicides costume ideas and sad faces drawn in the margins around them. One drawing looked like Edgar sleeping.

 

Next to everything was a note: ' _Hi, it's me, don't freak out! – <3 JC'_

 

Johnny had been there. Before he woke up with nothing in his head, Edgar's Johnny had been in the room drawing pictures and writing a note with a _heart_ attached to it for Edgar. The person sleeping down the hall _was_ his Johnny, for certain. Or he had been. Which, Edgar decided, meant he could be again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn't that Devi wasn't happy Johnny was alive. She was delighted, really. But she'd spent good time and energy pushing through the idea that he would not be there anymore, dealing with having unfinished edges and strange feelings, and trying to accept that they would all have to start making decisions for a future without him.

 

And now here he was. Except not quite.

 

The revelation that Johnny had forgotten everything had hit her like a spear, and judging by his sudden need to camp out with Devi and Tenna, it had done the same to Jimmy.

 

He spent most of his time wrapped in blankets, his back braced against the couch, using his teeth and tongue to twist the ring in his lip while he watched reruns of the Flying Dutchman Hour with Devi. He'd always been so much more attached to Tenna, and though Devi didn't mind him nearly as much as she once did, she'd been surprised when she was the one Jimmy latched onto after Johnny came back.

 

With Tenna in the bathroom during the commercials, Jimmy broke his long silence.

 

“Can I tell you something fucked up?”

 

Devi didn't even look up. “About Nny?”

 

Jimmy's mouth fell open slightly. “Wha – ?”

 

“We're all thinking about it, Jimmy.”

 

“I just... I kinda don't know if I want him to remember.”

 

“What the fuck?”

 

“I could have a chance! If he doesn't remember anything I did when we met, he might like me better now!”

 

“Well, you were right. That is definitely fucked up.”

 

“I just – maybe it would be better. Maybe he'd be happier and then we could both be the special two that _don't_ remember, instead of when Edgar showed up and he was the only other one who _did.”_

 

“Jimmy, this is a bad idea.”

 

“You just want him back the way he was.”

 

She flipped her sketchbook down on her lap. “You know what? I'm not sure I do. You're not the only one thinking about what would happen if you could erase every dumb thing you ever did with another person.”

 

“Then why are you yelling at me about it?”

 

“It's just – it's bad to hope for it the way you are.”

 

“You guys never want me to hope for anything.”

 

“Because you hope for outrageous shit!”

 

“Why is me getting someone I want outrageous?!”

 

“Because it isn't what _Nny_ wants! He doesn't remember who the fuck he even is, but he still wants to stay with Edgar! He still showed up at Edgar's house straight out of Hell! If his personality is still intact, it's always going to be Edgar!”

 

“Jeez, Dev.”

 

“And are you sure that's even Nny? Is that even the same person you wanted so bad?”

 

“It's gotta be him.”

 

“Does it? Or do you just _want_ it to be?”

 

“Well, which is it?!”  Jimmy shouted. “Either he's so much Nny that he's always gonna choose Edgar, or he's someone else now and he might choose _me_!”

 

Devi put her face in her hands. “I don't know, Jimmy. I don't fucking know.” She looked back at him. “But you should try to prepare yourself for some kind of disappointment, no matter what.”

 

He frowned. “One day, I'm gonna get something I was optimistic about and when I do I'm gonna come over here and punch you in the face with it.”

 

“You do that.”

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning, Edgar woke hoping the whole thing had somehow been a dream, but when he turned the corner to the bathroom he found Johnny sitting on counter with his knees braced around the sink, staring at his face in the mirror. This wouldn't necessarily have been strange for his Johnny, but this Johnny was tracing his own features as though he didn't know them. 

 

And he didn't. 

 

“Don't worry, you look fine,” Edgar said. 

 

Johnny startled and nearly fell into the sink. “Oh, shit!”

 

“God, sorry! Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, I was just – ” He gestured vaguely to the mirror. “It just looks weird to me.”

 

“Maybe it takes time to get used to having a face.”

 

Johnny shrugged at the glass and climbed down off the sink. “I'll let you know. Sorry about that.”

 

“Don't apologize, it's fine.”

 

“I wish it felt fine, but okay.”

 

When Edgar first met Johnny he could do nothing but stand quietly on the sidelines and try to think beams of support and comfort when Johnny was distressed. Gradually, he'd been let in and he knew the limits and the signals and though it wasn't the unrestrained shrieking affection he'd always seen on TV, knowing what that level of contact meant for Johnny made it _feel_ like television love. Now Edgar was stuck knowing the boundaries and the signals and being unable to respond to any of them. 

 

“Hey, Edgar?” Johnny called from beyond the bathroom door. Edgar's name was starting to sound better coming from this Johnny, but the tone behind it was still wrong.

 

“Yes?”

 

“When you're done, can you come look at this?”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah. Just when you're done.”

 

Edgar hurried himself through everything he needed to do thinking this would be it, this would be the moment that something snapped and Johnny knew everything again. He dried his hands on his shirt and when he opened the door, Johnny stood in the doorway of Edgar's room holding a photo.

 

Johnny held the photograph Devi had given to Edgar of the almost-kiss in the van as though he were afraid it would dissolve in his hands. He looked at Edgar, eyes wide. “Is this real?”

 

“Yes.”

 

He looked back into the photo and then leafed through the others. “Oh my god.  Why didn't you say anything?”

 

“I don't know, I thought I'd look creepy! I didn't want to scare you, I didn't want to lose you  _again_ , I – I'm sorry, I just thought maybe I should ease into it. I can't just say, 'Hey, by the way, I was your boyfriend' out of nowhere.”

 

“Wow.” He cracked a pained smile at one of the photos. “This was kinda serious, huh?”

 

_“I need to run away”_

 

 

“Kinda, yeah.”

 

“How long?”

 

“I met you right after I turned sixteen. You moved in with me the same day.  Until you died, we'd never been apart.”

 

 

_“from you, from me”_

 

 

“God, okay, this... this explains a lot.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“No, no, it's okay. I'm sorry too, I guess.” He ran a hand through his hair and gazed into the photos Edgar had tried to will himself back into a hundred times. “How the hell have you been just  _existing_ with me here?”

 

“Poorly?”

 

He looked into Edgar's eyes, determined. “I want to remember this.”

 

“You _do?”_

 

“Why wouldn't I?”

 

“I mean, I want you to, too, but I thought maybe you wouldn't like me this time, or if you didn't remember anything, then – god, sorry.”

 

“It's really okay,” Johnny said. “I like what I know of you, or what I think I'm looking at, anyway.” He smirked at the photo in his hands. “I don't know myself much either, but I think I irrationally trust me.”

 

Edgar almost laughed.  It had been so long since he really laughed or even felt like it would be theoretically possible. “I like to think you were a decent judge of people.”

 

“So maybe you're what I need to remember. You should show me this. We should try this.”

 

“Whoa, whoa, I don't – ”

 

“What if it's a kiss that does it? That's some fairy tale amnesia shit, right?”

 

The moment in the photo in Johnny's hands flashed through Edgar's head.  “Oh god, I don't think – ”

 

“Come on, please?  Just to see.”

 

“I can't, it's not you. Him.”

 

“But it  _is_ me, I'm just missing some stuff.”

 

“You used to argue that the presence of memory was exactly what made a person who they were.”

 

Johnny stepped closer to him. “All the better reason to try to bring it all back, right?”

 

“I can't believe I'm having this conversation.”

 

“Come on, look at these!” He gestured to the photos he'd spread out all over the bed. “Look at me, look at  _you!_ That looks like you're feeling something!  We look  _elated_ about  _nothing_ .  I really want to remember this, I want to do this.”

 

“I – I want to. It's been ages, and you are  _so close_ to being him, but I can't. I just can't. I need it to be really you.”

 

“What if it's never really me? Are you willing to bet that this definitely won't make me remember and just do nothing?  What then, we start over?”

 

Edgar covered his nose and mouth with his hands and looked into the ceiling. He exhaled slowly, but it did nothing to calm him down. “Can you just – can I think about this?”

 

“Do you not like me now?”

 

“No, no, that's not it. I just need a little bit.”

 

“All right. Can we be okay in the meantime?”

 

“God, I hope so.”

 

 

_“you take me higher than anything has before”_

 

 

“Can we go out somewhere?”

 

“Out?”

 

“I don't mean like a weird date, I just mean another change of scenery. Take the keys this time. Maybe it'll help the brains.” He tapped his head and smiled. Two days ago Edgar would have died to see that smile but now felt like it was killing him to look at it.

 

“Okay.”

 

 

 

 

Edgar took Johnny outside with the intent of taking him to the school. He gave Johnny the rest of the keys too, just in case lightning struck and Johnny suddenly knew how to get inside. As they got closer to the school, Edgar suggested steering to the other side of the street to avoid looking at the black void in where Pepito's house had been, but when they drew close enough to see anything, the void was gone and the lot was only grass.

 

“That lot looks weird,” Johnny said.

 

“You can tell?”

 

“I don't know what's weird about it, but it is definitely weird. I want to look at it.”

 

Johnny strolled toward it but Edgar grabbed his arm and pulled him away. “No!”

 

“Ow, ow, what?”

 

Edgar released his arm, startled. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know you don't like to be grabbed, but that yard was just a giant hole when you died and I'm not sure it isn't still one.”

 

“You think the grass is fake?”

 

“There used to be fake _house_ there, so it's really possible.”

 

“Oh. Did it get sucked into the hole, or...?”

 

“No, it just vanished when you died. Please just humor me and stay back until we know it's just grass, okay?”

 

“Oh. Yeah, okay, no problem.”

 

Edgar led them to the school and they tried to peer into the windows of the choir room. The windows were often covered from the inside and the ones that weren't had accumulated a strange layer of yellowed film over the years, so it was difficult to see inside.

 

They tried the door, but it was locked. Johnny stood helplessly with the keys in his hands.

 

“I don't even know where to start,”he said.

 

“Let's try another door,” Edgar suggested.

 

They were lucky with one single open door in the sets of double doors around the corner and as soon as he set foot inside, Edgar wanted to drag Johnny to every feature of the building, hoping something would spark.

 

“So that's Shmee the Wolverine,” he said, nodding toward the ceiling where the school mascot was stored in his case.

 

“He's charming.” Johnny said, hands on his hips. “Must be very popular with the other dead wolverines.”

 

“We used to feed him.”

 

Johnny's eyes lit up. “Wait, did  _we_ taxidermy him?”

 

Edgar laughed, though it was just a little. It had been so long he was still rusty. “No, sorry.  He was here when we got here.  Or, I assume he was.  I wasn't here for that part.”

 

 

_“you take me higher than anything has before”_

 

 

“Damn, you had me really excited for a second.”

 

“Sorry to disappoint.”

 

“But we feed dead shit?”

 

“Not... routinely.  Just _this_ dead shit.”

 

“Oh. Specific dead shit.  Okay then.”

 

Edgar led him down the corridor to the choir room and then remembered Dib.  He took an abrupt left and Johnny followed him into the band room.

 

“Dib? Dib, are you home?”

 

“I don't live here,” Dib called back.

 

“Oh, thank god.” Edgar knocked on the filing cabinets with Johnny trailing along behind him. “I think I need your help.”

 

“Mmm, I would if I could, but someone likes to throw my technology into  _literal pits from Hell.”_

 

“Dib, please. Johnny's back.”

 

The cabinets swung open and Dib stuck his head out. “That's not right. I have footage of him dying.”

 

Edgar winced, but it intrigued Johnny and he tilted his head and stepped foward. “You do?”

 

“Yes. From the camera your boyfriend carelessly tossed into Hell trying to find you. Your boyfriend who has seen better days, wow.  What the heck happened to your face?”

 

“Fuck you,” Edgar grumbled.

 

Johnny glanced at Edgar and then stepped closer to Dib. “Can I see it?”

 

Dib accepted 'complete amnesia' very easily and happily agreed to show Johnny the footage of his own death.  Edgar stood in the corner while Dib sat Johnny down at one of his monitors with an over-sized pair of headphones. Johnny leaned toward the screen, fascinated, pressing the headphones harder against his head. Edgar kept his arms around himself and avoided looking at the screen as much as possible.

 

“Whoa!” Johnny cried suddenly. “Who the hell is that?”

 

“Ah,” Dib said, tapping the keyboard to pause the footage. “Pepito.”

 

“He's got horns.”

 

“Apparently he's the son of _Satan_ ,” Dib told him. “I've got quite a bit on him. Mostly thanks to you, actually. You really don't remember him?”

 

“No. But you guys – ” He pulled the headphones off and looked back at Edgar. “You guys are all telling me I was in  _ Hell _ . ”

 

Edgar winced. “That necklace you came back with, I threw it into that hole outside because Dib's people said it was Hell, and the guy with horns who says he's the son of Satan took you from me when you died. It... made sense.”

 

Dib jolted to attention. “He brought it back?!”

 

“Just the pendant,” Edgar said. “I didn't see the camera, sorry.”

 

Johnny flexed his fingers around the headphones. “Was I a bad person?”

 

“No! It wasn't you, it was an accident of people we know and where we are, that's all.  You were great.”

 

“Hmm.” Johnny set the headphones down and just sat for several seconds, his lip caught in his teeth.

 

Dib tapped away at two keyboards at once, frantically glancing between monitors. “Stay here just a minute while I try to get a signal from that camera again. I have more footage from your adventures, do you want to see it? The stuff with the motel is really something.”

 

Edgar's chest tightened. “You saw that too?”

 

“Of course! Here.”

 

The screen in front of Johnny flashed and up popped erratic bouncing footage of a dark and frantic run through sparse lighting. Dib frowned and unplugged Johnny's headphones so that the speakers erupted with screaming, panting, and the pounding of a song.

 

Edgar had been directly behind Johnny for almost the entire run, so when the camera managed to swing in the right direction, it was Johnny it recorded.

 

Johnny stared at the shaking footage, transfixed by his own image. Knots formed in Edgar's stomach as the images on the screen became familiar and he slowly settled his hand over his mouth. The camera raced through horror after horror, through the room where Edgar saw the machine he'd died in, and through Johnny trying so hard to help him.

 

And then what Edgar both wanted Johnny to see and what he was afraid would just be planting memories settled into view. The camera turned to Johnny as he tried to focus on the people in his head and then went black as Johnny threw himself against Edgar.

 

'I love you' came muffled through the speakers.

 

“Then after this it gets really weird,” Dib said. “It's like he's another person.”

 

“Let's not do this part,” Edgar said.

 

“It's the best stuff, though.”

 

“Please.”

 

Dib shrugged and turned the video off.  Johnny sat in silence.  He looked lost and conflicted when he glanced up at Edgar.

 

Edgar swallowed and turned to Dib. “I actually came to see if you knew anything about memory loss. I thought you could scan him or something.”

 

Dib opened something on three monitors at once. “I could scan him for alien tech, for foreign bodies, and genetic anomalies.”

 

Johnny blinked at him. “Really?”

 

“Sure, just a minute.” He kicked a button on his floor and a frame like the scanners at the airport unfolded from the side wall. “We'll just put you through this and get our preliminary results.”

 

“That seems... convenient,” Johnny said. “Or dangerous.  One of those.”

 

“Totally safe. I've stepped through multiple times!”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny eyed Dib dubiously. “I bet.”

 

Dib led Johnny through the scanner and again Edgar didn't know what to hope for. His Johnny was there, somewhere, in the these moments of sarcasm or dark humor. He didn't want there to be something physically  _wrong_ with Johnny, but knowing a cause would make this easier, knowing there was something tangible they could work with instead of just phantom memories and faces or lack thereof in mirrors would give them something to stand on.

 

"Open your mouth," Dib said, pointing a cotton swab at Johnny's face.

 

"Wait a sec --"  But he was cut off by Dib swabbing his cheek.

 

"Thanks, I'll just input that," he said, smearing the swab across a panel on his desk.

 

The monitors on the desk next to Edgar zipped into loading screens, spinning icons, and advancing progress bars while Johnny stood warily surrounded by Dib's foldout technology. After several seconds, lights flashed, a few things beeped, and and Dib gestured grandly for Johnny to step away.

 

“We'll have your results in just a minute.”

 

Johnny stood next to Edgar, though it hurt to think it was not out of fondness, only greatest familiarity and wariness of Dib.

 

“Hmm,” Dib said, adjusting his glasses.

 

Edgar leaned over him to get a look at the screens, but understood nothing of what he was seeing. “What is it?”

 

“Nothing,” Dib said. “There's nothing wrong with him. No alien implants, no spliced DNA, nothing. He's totally normal.”

 

Edgar's heart sank. “You said it was preliminary, could there be something deeper?”

 

“Not a chance; I programmed this myself. If we found something, a deeper scan would tell us its point of origin and what it was made of, but scanning deeper when even this scan didn't find anything is pointless.  We'd just find out his organs are made of human.”

 

Johnny stood next to Edgar with no expression on his face. It wasn't him being strange and unreadable anymore, just be someone hearing neutral information.

 

“Okay,” Edgar said. “Thanks.”

 

“Don't you want to see if the camera still works?  I'm still scanning for it.”

 

“Call me or something,” Edgar told him as he stepped through Dib's cabinet doors.

 

 

 

 

They left Dib in relative quiet, saying nothing about what they'd seen. Edgar led Johnny to the choir room and had him peer through the tiny windows in the big double doors.

 

“We spent a lot of time here,” Edgar said. “I don't know which key opens it, but take a look.”

 

“Is there blood on this door?”

 

A rust-colored smear with traces of fingerprints adorned the doors.

 

“You were dead,” Edgar replied. “It was your birthday.” It would have been a real explanation to his Johnny.

 

“Oh. Okay.” This Johnny chose to accept it as something he wasn't going to understand. He drew close to the little windows and stood up on his toes, careful not to let his stomach brush the dried blood.

 

“What do you think?” Edgar asked.

 

“It's a choir room.”

 

“Well, yeah, but do you – ?”

 

Johnny turned abruptly toward Edgar. “I died. Right there. Just fucking  _on_ you.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And all that running shit, everything we were doing, the shit we said... You really were my boyfriend.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Johnny dropped down from his toes. “Sorry I made you watch that. I just wanted to see. I have all of you telling me things but I still don't know who I am or make sense to myself. I thought a video would make things clearer. Videos have no agendas.”

 

Edgar exhaled. “It's fine. I wouldn't be excited to see my own death, but I get why you did it.”

 

“Thanks.” Johnny smiled at him, which still hurt. “Should we start digging through these keys?”

 

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Get the smaller set out. You kept the important ones together.”

 

Johnny pulled out the smaller cluster of keys from his coat pocket. “What do these go to?”

 

“I don't know which ones are which, but it should be at least the choir room, the roof, the pool, and my house.”

 

“Okay. Let's see what we get.”

 

He opened the choir room door on the first try, but before Edgar could get too hopeful Johnny winced and looked back at him. “Sorry. Just luck.”

 

“It's okay. We'll keep trying.”

 

Edgar let Johnny walk into the room first, hoping to see some sign, some kind of subconscious attraction to a particular spot that might make this feel conquerable, but there was nothing.

 

“So what was this?” Johnny asked. “What did we do here?”

 

“Everything. You lived here before we met.”

 

Johnny let out a frustrated sigh. “Okay.”

 

“You alright?”

 

“How am I even supposed to answer that? I  _feel_ fine. But I just keep being told that I'm  _not._ And then, with the videos, I  _want_ to remember, but what if I miss stuff happening  _now_ because I'm so focused on getting the old stuff back? Are you going to put everything on hold until I remember?”

 

“It's only been a little while. We probably don't need to panic about that yet. But if you want more video and less agenda, I brought something with me that might help.”

 

Johnny looked around the room, lost and desperate. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

 

Edgar reached into his bad and brought out Jimmy's tablet. He hadn't looked at it in several weeks. Burdened by a resentment for his own delighted voice on the recordings, he couldn't see the videos without bitterly lashing out at himself or crying at seeing just tiny moments of Johnny being perfect.  But this morning, he'd thought they could use it to compare locations Jimmy had filmed with the real world, or look things up, or maybe just take some pictures and look normal.  He'd ignored the videos so long he'd almost forgotten that Johnny might benefit from seeing them, even if Edgar found them painful. 

 

Johnny held the tablet while his own voice echoed out of it. _“Are you doing that again?”_ it asked.

 

 _“I don't know what you're talking about,”_ said recorded Edgar.

 

 _“You're fucking weird, Edgar.”_  
  
  


_“Whatever you want. Keep going, come on.”_

 

_“I can't have a casual conversation on command.”_

 

_“You just were!”_

 

_“Yeah, but now I know you're recording it.”_

 

_“People record us all the time.”_

 

_“That's not the same thing.”_

 

_“Not even for me?”_

 

Laughter from the tablet, and then a concession, _“Maybe for you. What the fuck was I saying?”_

 

Present Johnny smiled sadly at the videos as he watched himself have interrupted conversations with Edgar on the tiny screen. It was when he opened one that had the both of them in frame, mostly wrestling for control of it, that he put the tablet down.

 

“So definitely my boyfriend, then.”

 

“Uh, yeah. I didn't know we were still doubting that part.”

 

“No, no, I'm not. I mean, I _know_ it. I saw the other video with that Dib guy, I just – it's kind of everywhere.”

 

Edgar swallowed and tried to slow his heartbeat. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

 

“Sorry. I'm trying.”

 

“It's not your fault.”

 

“You're sure you don't want to try kissing me?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh. Okay. You want to try somewhere else?”  He handed the tablet back. 

 

“There is somewhere else here you should see again.”

 

 

 

The door to the roof was cold. As Edgar opened the door and gestured for Johnny to go through, he thought of every time they'd come up here in the cold and it had felt warmer just for Johnny existing.  Now it really was just a cold top of a building.  The last time Edgar had been here he'd observed Johnny's birthday, but no magic or joy.

 

Johnny did not remember enough to think the place lacked magic.

 

“Wow! This is _great_!” He twirled in a circle with his arms outstretched and for a few moments Edgar was two years away and the world wasn't quite so black.

 

“This is one of your favorite places,” Edgar said.

 

“Hell _yeah_ it is,” Johnny replied, leaning over the edge toward Pepito's house. “I want to come up here all the time and have sleepovers or something.”

 

“We used to.”

 

“Yeah? Like some cheesy boyfriend thing or normal shit?”

 

Sleepovers and singing and hiding and crying and screaming and a first kiss. “There may have been a few cheesy boyfriend things up here.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I'm not surprised.  I feel like trying to fly up here or just – singing until I leave my body.”

 

 _Singing._ Would it hurt Johnny again? Would it bring the memories back right along with the thing in that motel? Or was he safe to actually enjoy it now?

 

“I kind of hope you're not looking to leave me again, but I know the feeling.”

 

“Oh. No, I didn't mean like that, just... It's kind of an 'up and over'.” Johnny made an arcing motion with his hand as he tried to convey the feeling.  "You know?"

 

“Yeah.” Edgar swallowed, wondered if he should be crying and braced himself for _something_. “Do you _have_ any songs you want to sing up here?”

 

Johnny blinked and ran one hand over his shaved scalp. “I... don't.  I feel like I've heard five songs in my whole life.  Just whatever you played back at the house.  But I don't remember them enough to sing them.”

 

Edgar exhaled slowly. _Even that's gone. He can't hear it all anymore._

 

“Do you hear any now?” Edgar asked.

 

Johnny shook his head. “I don't hear anything. Just traffic.”

 

The song Johnny could not hear sagged miserably inside Edgar.

 

“ _Help, I'm alive,”_ Edgar quoted.

 

“What?”

 

“I'm not sure I – ” _Fuck it._ “Those are the first words you ever said to me. Lyrics.”

 

“You remember the first words I said to you?”

 

“And practically every word since.”

 

Johnny smiled cautiously. “You're making that up.  You're gonna fuck with someone with no memory, really?”

 

Even if it hurt, Johnny was hard not to smile at. “I may have exaggerated _slightly.”_

 

Johnny sighed and gazed down at the grass where Pepito's house and the hole to Hell had been. “It's going to be a problem if I don't remember, isn't it?”

 

“You will.”

 

“But what if I don't? What are you guys going to do?”

 

“We'll cope, I guess. But it's not going to be like that. We'll figure it out. We just have to find the thing that unlocks it.”

 

“You're not listening to me. Seriously, what will you do if you never get back whatever I was from cheesy boyfriend time?”

 

“You seem so convinced it's going to happen.”

 

“Will you just _answer me?!_ ”

 

“It would be hard! I'd be upset! I'm upset _now_ just thinking about it! I don't _like_ thinking abut it! But you can't sit here talking about it like it's inevitable!”

 

“Fuck, I – I want to remember, Edgar, I do, but I don't think I'm  _going to_ . You've been showing things that were supposed to be important to me since the second I got here and I feel nothing when I look at any of them! They're neat, but I don't suddenly feel nostalgic or magically cured or anything. And you guys all look at me like it hurts no matter what I'm doing! I'm not  _not_ remembering just to hold out on people; I want to remember. But if I  _don't_ ... It don't feel like anyone likes me the way I am  _now_ , they just want me to hurry up and be someone else.”

 

“ _I_ like you.”

 

“Pfft. Not as much as the version of me you lost.”

 

Edgar swallowed. “That's not fair.”

 

“I'm not fair. Me existing isn't fair. And I'm still trying to do what you guys all want but I can't stop thinking I'm wishing myself away if I become the person you knew.”

 

 

_“there's no walls between us now_

_except the ones we bring”_

 

 

“I don't think so. Not when you say that.”

 

“Why?”

 

“You used to say that same thing about ...what was wrong with you before. So you're still _you_. It's the same core.”

 

Johnny threw a small stone at Pepito's lot. It hit the sidewalk just short of the grass. “Just missing all the stuff you guys like.”

 

“No, you're missing things we _shared_.  What we like is still here.” He might have been trying to convince himself, but it didn't seem as hopeless as it once had and the sentiment surprised him when it felt so genuine. Maybe he could cope with this?

 

 

_“to hide the grace that we_

_do not want to see”_

 

 

Johnny looked up at him. “Sorry. I should be complaining to someone else.”

 

“Maybe,” Edgar said, shrugging. “But we don't have anyone else.”

 

“I meant just other than you.”

 

“Why just me?”

 

Johnny gestured widely. “Look at you! Me not being here clearly fucked you up.”

 

Edgar frowned. “Wow, thanks.”

 

“I just mean it's not … it's not fair. To anybody. Sorry.”

 

“It's okay.” The grass in Pepito's lot looked so normal. Edgar reached down to grab a rock to throw and countless images of romantic comedy heads bumping and hands accidentally touching flashed through his mind. “I'm glad you want to talk to me at all. I'm know I'm not thrilling company lately. I don't know how Devi has tolerated me this long.”

 

He threw the rock and it landed in the grass, or at least looked like it.

 

“You're fine,” Johnny said, reaching for another rock. “I get it.”

 

Johnny's rock landed near Edgar's.

 

“Thanks,” Edgar said. He glanced around the roof but only saw more pebbles and few discarded Frisbees. “Wish we had something heavier to throw.”

 

“We could just go down there and find a brick or something,” Johnny suggested.

 

“I guess. I just kind of like the distance. I want to hit Pepito with rocks but I also kind of want enough space to run from him.”

 

“Did he do this?” Johnny asked, gesturing to his temple.

 

“I think so. He's done it before to both of us on a smaller scale.”

 

“Couldn't he _un_ do it, then?”

 

“Probably. But I don't know how to find him now that the house and the hole are gone.”

 

“Do we do summoning and shit? Do we know anyone who does? Like, dead goats or something?”

 

Edgar shrugged. “Jimmy has been wanting to try some of that. Let's talk to him.”

 

Johnny's tone dropped. “Jimmy, huh?”

 

“What?”

 

“He likes me a lot. Or he likes what I was.”

 

“...Yes.”

 

“I feel weird about that and I don't know why.”

 

“That might be a good sign. Don't worry about it too much,” Edgar said gently. “He's mostly harmless.”

 

“Says my old boyfriend, agenda-less.”

 

“It's not like that.”

 

“Nevermind. Forget it. I'm sorry I said anything.”

 

 

_“and I waited hours for this_

_and now I watch it fade”_

 

 

But Edgar could not forget anything because Johnny had forgotten everything. Nothing even looked like it _might_ be familiar to Johnny and the longer it went on the more Edgar became convinced that the solution was either in Johnny's song or nonexistent. Either Edgar had to be the one to choose make Johnny remember, or he never _would_ remember.

 

_“this moment that we share_

_will always, always slip away”_

 

He'd made so many decisions on this roof, so this might as well be one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

_“you take me higher than anything has before”_

 

 

 

 

Thoughts of visiting Jimmy for his goat sacrifice knowledge faded with the sunlight as Edgar considered that he didn't know _how_ Johnny was here. Pepito could be out in the universe somewhere extremely angry. Johnny could have outwitted him, bargaining his memory to trap Pepito in Hell, and now summoning him would be unleashing him onto them again. It could be a _good thing_ that they currently had no idea where Pepito was.

 

So instead of summoning the Anti-Christ, Edgar decided to slow down and put Johnny at ease.

 

The next morning, as Johnny poured some cereal, he braced himself for the day. “So where are we going to jump start my head today?”

 

“What if we don't try to force it so hard today?” Edgar asked.

 

“What?”

 

“Lots of things happen when you aren't trying for them to happen. At least that's what TV thinks about rich women looking for love and jobs. So maybe we just stay home and do nothing today.”

 

“That sounds good. I'm... kinda tired.”

 

“I think we all are.” Edgar's cereal nearly overflowed when he added the milk. “Do you still want to remember? In general?”

 

“Yeah. Mostly, I – ” He looked up from the cereal bowl and grinned at Edgar. “Mostly, I want to remember the thing with you.”

 

“Oh.” Edgar could have laughed or cried, but whatever it was produced a strangled puff of air. “I'm glad.”

 

“It just looks like it was a good thing.”

 

“I like to think so.”

 

 

_ “you take me higher than anything has before” _

 

 

They ate breakfast in front of infomercials, played some video games Edgar hadn't touched since before Johnny's death (Johnny was pleased that all the good saved games were his), and had a stereo dance party not unlike the one Johnny had used to introduce Edgar to his world just after they met.

 

Johnny didn't know any songs. He didn't know his favorites, the ones he'd performed, not even the ones he'd written, but he loved the same ones he had before he died even if he didn't automatically know them inside and out. That afternoon, he re-learned songs and he sang and thought nothing of it. And because there was nothing in his head, he wasn't in pain and nothing burst from their floorboards to devour them. No static women began speaking to him, his personality wasn't taken over. He wasn't afraid, he wasn't rattled with anxiety. He just _sang_ and laughed and enjoyed it and if Edgar was right about what he was about to do, it could be the last time Johnny sang. A s Johnny sang ' _I Love Belarus_ ' with Edgar in the living room, Edgar became even more certain of the decision he'd made on the roof, but he hoped that Johnny would remember _not_ remembering just enough not to lose the last time he got to sing.

 

Edgar didn't want to be responsible for Johnny suffering, and he thought it was _possible_ that he could start over. He feared both options and still desperately wanted something else to take the decision away from him.

 

When the song ended, Edgar switched the stereo off and stood in front of his keyboard as though facing a wronged friend. He tugged the sheet off of it with a bit of a flourish and let it fall to the floor as he took a seat. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. This had to be what would do it. And if it wasn't, he was starting over. Both options were terrifying.

 

Johnny looked up from the pile of CDs where he'd been randomly selecting their soundtrack. “What are you doing? What happened?”

 

Edgar beckoned him over. “Come here.”

 

Johnny looked up at him. “Oh, are you gonna – ?”

 

“Come on.” He slid to the left and tapped the space next to him. “Have a seat.”

 

Johnny eagerly climbed onto the bench next to him. “Shit, I've been hoping you would do this.”

 

“Yeah.” He took another breath in an attempt to steady his heart. “I want to play a song for you.”

 

“Oh, just for me, huh? You like me after all.”

 

“Ha _ha._ ”

 

“Do I know this one?”

 

Johnny's expression was open, innocent, enthusiastic. It was normal for this Johnny, who knew almost nothing about everything, and it could even be cute, but it didn't quite match Edgar's Johnny. The Johnny he wanted back, no matter how selfish it was.

 

“No.”

 

“Oh, okay.”

 

“How do you feel about – ?” His voice caught in his throat as he remembered Johnny starting a very important question that way in this very spot. Edgar coughed and his voice cracked when he tried again. “How do you feel about remembering now?”

 

Johnny looked at him, wide-eyed and confused. “I still want to?  I told you this morning.”

 

“I mean _right now_.”

 

“Yes? Do you know how? Why didn't you tell me, you – ”

 

Edgar didn't answer him. He'd heard 'yes', and that was all he needed before he overthought what he doing and stopped himself. He had to find the notes – a little higher here, this one is sharp, this one isn't – but once he did, the song that had been twisting its way through all his dreams and many of his nightmares slowly took form in his hands.

 

He tried not to look at Johnny while it played, tried not to hope, even though he wasn't completely sure what he would be hoping _for_.  Hope to condemn Johnny to a life of remembering murder or hope to never get the person Edgar loved most back?  The keyboard played the parts Edgar had programmed into it in his first desperate attempt to preserve the song and Edgar played other parts over it. In a few places he still needed to hum. Johnny made no sudden jolt or gasp of recognition. There was no bright light of deliverance or yawning chasm to Hell. Johnny's key did not magically reappear and tie itself to his neck. He was entirely silent, unblinking, watching Edgar's hands, hardly breathing. 

 

After a few layers of the song, Edgar began to lose hope. Only then was he absolutely certain that he'd rather be responsible for Johnny remembering murder than start over.  Seconds after that, he was certain that he was a terrible person and that even if this didn't work, he would be stuck with the knowledge that he'd attempted it for the rest of his life.

 

“I like this,” Johnny said suddenly.

 

Edgar sighed, unwilling to let the song go. “It's my favorite.”

 

“It sounds good with yours.” Johnny closed his eyes. “I was hoping it would, if it ever showed up.”

 

The notes faltered in Edgar's startled hands and he glanced at Johnny. “'Mine'? Can you – ? Do you hear it?”

 

“Hi,” Johnny said, opening his eyes.

 

“Hi?” Edgar's lip, hands, and heart began to tremble.

 

“I think it's been a while.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first time I wrote SWAN, I had the whole last chapter done for ages, and then suddenly had this idea of Johnny coming back from the dead with no memory of who he was like two days before it was supposed to go up. I was so angry because it was So Good and So thematically appropriate to the story, but I had already finished writing everything and had to cram this concept in. This time, I knew it was coming all along, so I was able to actually weave it in properly. This story has always had an undercurrent of wondering what memory makes a person, what experiences make a person, what history makes a person, and how much of you you consciously define and so this element seemed not only appropriate but necessary. 
> 
> I tell people all the time that SWAN Is a non-linear and non-literal autobiography because every aspect of it is something that has effected me or been laced into me in some way, and this concern about the things in my past shaping me whether I like them or not, whether they were my fault or not, regularly haunts and preoccupies me. I feel kind of bad that the most authentically and completely ME thing I've ever made is still fanfiction. 
> 
> There were some issues with the memory loss section the first time around, mostly concerned with Edgar's approach to the situation, which I had to bend and twist to fit in with the rest of the story that I'd already finished the first time. The original had him completely cutting off contact with the others to the point of disconnecting his phone. This time, he has the impulses and panic reactions around all this and he isn't doing things perfectly or whatever, but he catches himself and realizes what he's doing when it matters. This also gives the others the unsettling experience of interacting with memory-less Johnny and wondering if this is a second chance to change their relationship with him. It's a better approach all around. I didn't want Edgar to be absolutely perfect in his handling of the situation, but I also didn't want him to do things that soured him too badly. I think he's doing well considering what he's been through. It's not realistic that he'd be as perfect and 'un-problematic' as Tumblr would probably want him, but to this I say Edgar lives in a world that consists of five people who have to bleed on the things they want and have nothing and no one to turn to but a kid who likes aliens more than people. He's doing fucking Good. 
> 
> I had such a weird experience writing memory-less Johnny and it was so impactful that it almost changed him a little in prior chapters (I had a lot of this kind of happening at the same time while it was being written). But maybe how Johnny not having memory later being PART of his memory and thus who he is as a person is a topic of conversation for the next one. The last one. I still can't believe that's real. 
> 
> Random notes about Blank!Johnny time: I really enjoyed using it as a way to revisit events from the duration of the story, and I took some particularly sadistic joy in using it as a time for Edgar to do everything for Johnny that Johnny had once done for him. Re-using key phrases for them in new contexts ("Edgar, do you play?") and basically just fucking torturing Edgar, I guess. That's what I do.
> 
> He was a little more open and innocent during this time in the first version of the story, but I wanted to make it clear that the core of Johnny is still there, and that even when he just woke up on the sidewalk he was still kinda sharp.
> 
> One of the things I like about doing this is showing the importance of mundane things. Keys, books, gloves, silly videos, necklaces. Trinkets of everyday life that become amulets and talismans when something happens. 
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for being here, I hope you come back for one more!
> 
>  
> 
> The song is the last song from the original SWAN
> 
> VAST - "Song Without A Name"


	28. trust me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End.

“Nny?”

 

“Hi.” He smiled and it was familiar. “I missed you.”

 

The keyboard played on even though Edgar's hands had turned to trembling jelly. “Oh my god. Oh my god, _you?_ _You_ you?”

 

Johnny laughed and even with tears the laugh was familiar and _right_. “Yeah. Yeah, it's me.”

 

“Oh my god, oh my god.” He fell over himself just trying to get closer to Johnny on the bench, all his muscles felt like they were misfiring, his chest tightened and boiled. “It's you? Really you?”

 

“Yeah, it's – ”Johnny winced, squeezed his eyes shut and there it was, there was the damage Edgar had brought back because he was a selfish monster who couldn't let go. “It's me, I – ” He looked up and made some shaky eye-contact with Edgar, whose hands were trembling and slowly reaching for Johnny's face like Johnny had suddenly become a ghost all over again. Johnny smiled at him. “You look _terrible.”_

 

“Oh god, that _is_ you!” All the tension and fear and constricting grief dropped out of Edgar's limbs and he fell forward, squeezing Johnny so tightly in a hug he thought he might break something. With every breath and every shaky word, Edgar's future returned.

 

“I'm pretty sure, yeah.” Johnny sounded emotional, he sounded genuine, he sounded _real_.

 

“Tell me something,” Edgar begged. “Tell me something you know. Something you _remember_.”

 

“I – um, I – ” Johnny's voice wavered at first, and then the unsure hesitation vanished. “I knew you were going to be a problem – that _this_ was going to be a problem – the second you gave me the keys to the pool. Maybe that doesn't work, I never actually told you that, I – ”

 

Edgar's voice struggled to escape his throat, and he still wouldn't release his hold on Johnny. “Oh my god, that's _you!”_

 

“Oh, shit, shit, don't cry, I can't do crying people.”

 

“I'm sorry,” Edgar sniffed. He hadn't even noticed he was crying. Crying had become so much like breathing and blinking in the last few months it had been ages since it felt like an event with a outside cause.

 

“Shit, I'm so glad to see you,” Johnny said. “I mean, I've been seeing you, but I'm so glad I just fucking know who you are. I can't believe you didn't think to use my song sooner.”

 

“I did, I just – god, I'm so sorry.”

 

“What? For what?”

 

“I knew. I _knew_ this would do it, but I kept hoping it – I hoped I wouldn't have to do this. I knew this was going to make you remember murder too and I didn't want to, I – I tried everything else, just so it wouldn't be _my_ fault that you remembered the murder stuff and then, even though you would have been better off without it, I just couldn't and I – I still did it, I still made you remember. I just – ” He pressed his face into Johnny's neck, wanted to be so close to him he could just crawl into his skin and hide. “I just wanted the real you back, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”

 

“It's okay,” Johnny said. There was no hint of anger or regret, just a statement.

 

Edgar backed away enough to look at him, though kept him very solidly close. Johnny did not seem to mind. “It's not.”

 

“It _is._ I'm really okay. Hell, it's better this way.”

 

“I feel like a horrible person.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “ _Everyone_ is a horrible person.”

 

“Not like this. Your whole life is going to be – because I couldn't just accept a new you and start over. God, I should have just started over. What did I do? Why didn't I just think it through a little more?”

 

“No, no, listen, okay?” Johnny smiled at him. Far more like the Johnny with no memory than Edgar's Johnny. Was blank Johnny part of his Johnny now too? “You still remember, right? Your other selves?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“And everyone else remembers me and their own bits of pieces of other versions of them. Do you really think you guys could have never mentioned it again in front of me? At all? _Forever?”_

 

Edgar shook his head. “Maybe?”

 

“No. You would have done it eventually. It's a huge part of everything for us. Here, right now, think of if I had asked you half an hour ago why we started a band, why this particular one. Imagine I really wanted details of what made us do this, why dead people, why I look like I did it. What would you have told me?”

 

Edgar hesitated. There could be no ' _It was therapy for your murder memories_ ,' or ' _It was inspired by our past lives_.' “I guess just that we thought it was a cool idea.”

 

Johnny smirked. “And how long would I have believed that?”

“Maybe a little while. I could have kept making things up.”

 

“How long? Do you think Devi and the others would be able to keep all the lies straight?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“And what if Jimmy suddenly remembered in front of me?”

 

“Oh, god.”

 

“See? It would have happened, I would have found out. So now, this way, I get all the stuff that matters to me along with all the shit you guys would have sucked at keeping from me anyway. It's better like this. I don't have to start myself over again – or us over again – and you're here. Doing this.”

 

“I still feel like a selfish monster.”

 

“God, Edgar, if you're a selfish monster, what the fuck am I? We're okay. I'm fine.”

 

Rarely, if ever, had Johnny been quite this gentle. As welcome as it was, Edgar hoped it still meant this was _his_ Johnny.

 

“I should have just done what you wanted and started over, but I couldn't let all this just _go_.”

 

“Hey, are you not listening to me? I _got_ what I really wanted. I _remembered.”_ He shrugged. “And the dork with the glasses likes me.”

 

Edgar hugged him tight again, his face scratching at Johnny's skin. “The dork with glasses _loves_ you.”

 

“I missed you.”

 

Edgar laughed, or maybe sobbed. “God, I missed you too, you have no idea. It was so much more than missing you, it was my whole life sucked out of me, it was – I was a mess.”

 

Johnny's gaze dropped and his smile faded. “I saw.”

 

“You _saw?”_

 

“I saw _everything._ Everything you did. You and everyone else. Pepito had me watching all of it.”

 

The horror of how cowardly he'd been set in on Edgar like layers of heavy stones. “So you really were there. You really were down there, and I didn't _go_ , I didn't go _get you,_ oh my god.”

 

“No, no, no, you couldn't have done anything!” Johnny gripped his arm frantically. “I checked. I tried.”

 

“I wanted to find you.”

 

“I know. I saw what you were doing. I saw you sitting at that hole a lot.”

 

“It wouldn't have taken much longer for me to do it. If you hadn't come back when you did...”

 

“Yeah, I got the feeling you were at kind of at a _point_.”

 

“...I would have died for you.”

 

“I would have killed for _you,_ so I guess that works out.”

 

“What?”

 

Johnny looked back into Edgar's eyes with this reflective sadness, as though he fully expected he was going to lose Edgar any second. “God, I'm so happy to see you and know who you are. It's fucking me up that I ever didn't know. I know what you are, who you are, better than I know almost anything. That it was just blank at one point … it kind of scares the shit out of me.”

 

“I – ”

 

Johnny closed his eyes and took a quick breath. “I attacked Todd to get out,” he said bluntly. “Because I knew Pepito liked him enough to keep him around for a century or so. I hoped I wouldn't have to actually hurt him, but I was ready to. There was no one in my head but me. No one else holding a knife, no one else deciding to do it. I can't blame some other persona or being taken over. I just wanted to come home.” He opened his eyes. “So maybe all three of me are capable of murder now. I needed to let you know before... I don't know. Before you got too excited, I guess.”

 

Edgar processed what Johnny was saying slowly, but even as the components of this slotted into place – Johnny had attacked someone with intent to kill, that someone had been relatively innocent, that someone had been someone they knew and who had Johnny had protected in another life, he'd done it to get back to Edgar, he was now someone who had been ready to murder three times over – Edgar couldn't make a single one of them matter. He'd contemplated suicide multiple times in the past few months and had then been too selfish to let Johnny live the rest of his life without painful memories. Johnny had been prepared to spill blood. It might have all been the same thing.

 

“It's okay.”

 

“Is it?”

He'd made these same rationalizations a lifetime ago. He'd been so worried about that making him a bad person before. It didn't seem to mean anything now. “In the right circumstances, we're all capable. It's – I don't care. Maybe it's not _okay_ , but it's _you._ I wanted you home again and you're here, and – and, _god_ , we obviously don't function well alone, so I…” He took a breath and tried to steady himself. “Nny, I don't care. If you're okay, I'm okay.”

 

Johnny smiled at him and briefly touched their foreheads together. “I'm okay.”

 

Edgar kept him from backing away too far. “I'm sorry, it's just been so long, can I –? ”

 

“You don't have to apologize.”

 

“Um.”

 

“You also don't have to ask.”

 

The blank Johnny had brought this up more than once. Edgar's Johnny had never asked to be kissed, never even seemed to think about it and that had been part of the terror in the idea of kissing him with no memory.

 

He'd wished so often to be kissing the real Johnny again and imagined it so many times that the sensations associated with the real experience left him a bit dizzy. It was absolutely perfect in that it _wasn't_ perfect or dreamy, but a bit strange and totally real.

 

Johnny pulled away, but not far. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked.

 

“You have to ask me that? _Anything._ ”

 

Johnny laughed softly. “Your face.”

 

“Wha – Jeez, I've had you back ten minutes and this already?” He wanted to laugh. He might have been.

 

“All the more proof that it's me. Wasting no time being an asshole.”

 

Boiling over with affection, he pressed his cheek against Johnny's, despite what Johnny had just requested. “God, I love you.”

 

“Okay, okay,” Johnny pushed against him, but he was still laughing. “Love me like you and not like a cactus. That shit feels _terrible.”_

 

Edgar pulled away. “Fine, fine, I'll do it now. I'll just – ” He looked up the stairs, and back to Johnny and something stabbed at twisted in his chest. “Um.”

 

“You okay?”

 

Johnny could disappear, he could run away, Pepito could take him the second Edgar released his hand, he could – “Sorry, this is weird, but will you come up with me? I know it's dumb, I just – I can't leave you, I'm scared you'll just vanish, I – ”

 

“It's okay. I'm not excited about losing track of you either.”

 

Edgar kissed the side of his head, breathed him in. He'd been so afraid to get this close when Johnny didn't remember. Now Johnny was perfect and home and just so dizzyingly real he was afraid _not_ to be close.

 

They climbed the stairs hand in hand while Edgar's mind raced. He had to tell everyone, he had to clean everything, everything he'd tried to force himself to get used to now didn't matter, Johnny had seen every single thing he'd done while he was alone...

 

“Hey,” Johnny said when they reached the top. “Its okay.”

 

“What?”

 

“You're freaking out.”

 

“No, I'm not, I'm just thinking about everything I have to do and – ”

 

“And _freaking out_. We're okay. I'm alive, you're alive, your face is made of steel wool. One thing at a time.”

 

“This isn't some Hell thing, is it? You can't hear my thoughts now, right?”

Johnny laughed at him. “No. I just know you.” He lowered his gaze. “And I've seen a lot of you freaking out recently.”

 

“Okay.” Edgar squeezed his hand and then gestured for Johnny to go in front of him.

It was always a tight fit to get two people into Edgar's bathroom, but he was determined to do it anyway. He was absolutely certain something would happen to Johnny if he left him alone or lost sight of him. He watched Johnny in the mirror – all three of him, _really_ him – while he contemplated taking a machete to his face.

 

“I'm sure you already are,” Edgar said, “but be grateful this doesn't happen to you.”

 

Johnny laughed. “Oh, I am. I got used to my hair not growing in Hell at all, though.” He ran his hand over the back of his head. “It's going to suck to have to shave my head again.”

 

“How terrible that you're alive.”

 

“That's not what I meant.”

 

Still jittery with emotion that Johnny was there with him, in the room and remembering him, Edgar wasn't sure he should be using a razor. But he wanted his face to feel normal again as much as Johnny did.

 

“Hey, wait a sec,” Johnny said when the razor got close to his jaw.

 

“What?”

 

“What if you – what if you just left that?”

 

“You just told me to get rid of it.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, most of it. The horrible part. But – ” He pushed himself away from the windowsill where he'd been half-sitting and stood behind Edgar so both (all six of) their faces were in the small mirror. “What if you left it along your jaw?” He hovered his finger just above the edge of Edgar's jaw. “Got rid of everything from here up.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah. Just humor me. If you don't like it just do it like usual.”

 

Edgar steered the razor around under Johnny's artistic direction and when he finally rinsed everything and got a look at his face, he was surprised to find something that looked different, and older, but still like him.

 

“Oh,” he said.

 

“And?”

 

“How long have you hated how my face looked?”

 

“What the fuck, I've been here with a functioning head for less than an hour and you're already accusing me of shit? I just thought it would look nice.”

 

 _“Does_ it look nice?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

_“Really?”_

 

“You always think I'm lying to you about facial hair. Is this some kind of deep niche issue with you?”

 

“I'm just a bit surprised,” Edgar said, leaning into the mirror. “I thought this would look too... _manly_ for you to like or something.”

 

Johnny waved his hands in mock distress, “Oh no, _men!_ ” and then he laughed and it was perfect. “I don't know how I feel about _manly_ , but I like _you_. This is you, so I like it. Do _you_ like it?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Then we're okay.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Edgar turned to face Johnny just to say something, or give Johnny a better look at his face, but seeing him just standing there, existing, breathing, _remembering_ was too overwhelming and he threw his arms around Johnny instead. Johnny tensed for a second or two but ultimately relaxed in Edgar's arms.

 

“I'm so happy to see you,” Edgar said. “I know I've said it already, but it is just _so much_.”

 

“I'm glad to see you too. Can we do this somewhere else, though?”

 

The bathroom _had_ always been a bit of a squeeze for two people.

 

Edgar nodded and let Johnny go. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I'm just... you know.”

 

“Yeah, I know. It's not just you. Come on.” He ducked around Edgar and out into the hall, where he sat on the top step looking down over the rest of the stairs. The first night Johnny spent in this house, Edgar had woken up to find him sitting there. Edgar joined him, taking deep breaths of reality and leaning into Johnny's shoulder.

 

“You're... sure this isn't some sort of hideous joke, right?”

 

“If it is, I'm not doing it.”

 

“I'm just ricocheting between being so happy that you're here to being terrified that you could stop being here at any second, and I don't know if it's safe to relax.”

 

“There's the freak out again.”

 

“Yeah, I think this is just what I do now. I feel like I don't even remember a time when I wasn't constantly freaking out, but I'm pretty sure it existed.”

 

Johnny laughed softly. “I can relate. I think I remember too much.”

 

“Do you remember not remembering?”

 

“Yeah, and it feels weird.”

 

“Is he in your head like the other ones?”

 

“There is no him, I don't think. I think he's just me.”

 

“He didn't feel the same.”

 

“Sorry? In my defense, I was trying.”

 

“No, no, god, don't be sorry. He was better than nothing. He was just... not quite you. Like he _could_ have been you, but...”

 

“What, you mean like if he'd experienced literally everything I ever have? What an idea.”

 

Edgar laughed softly. “Yeah, I guess so. Like you when you first started existing here, maybe.”

 

“Yeah. Kind of embarrassing, honestly. Like you saw me unfinished or naked or both. There wasn't any filter.”

 

“I didn't mind. I mean, he – you? – also liked me, despite me being a disaster, and I might not have known if you weren't so blank.”

 

“I could tell you weren't usually a disaster. Or I didn't care that you were, I don't know. And there was little stuff, and it was obvious you gave a shit about _me,_ so... maybe it would have been easier for me to like people before my whole life happened to me, I don't know. Which is fucking insane to think about, and just – fuck, it was the second time I had any kind of feeling at another person, but it felt like the first time. And it was the same person both times. It's really weird to remember your first time doing something twice.” Johnny gazed out over the stairs as though there was something greater than an old painting and a coat rack to look at there.

 

“I kept hoping it meant you were still in there. That it meant good things for us that you liked me even missing your memory.” The state of the house around them flashed through Edgar's mind. “And with me missing any kind of control of my life.”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny glanced at the floor. “That probably means something.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Johnny smiled at him. “Yeah. My whole life fell back into place today, you know? I'm just a little off balance. But I'm fine. I'll even out.”

 

“You do still feel different.”

 

“Still don't think it's me?”

 

“No, no, it's you, it just... it's like it's not quite the same anymore. It's not bad! Something just feels...” He shook his head. “Strange. I don't know. Maybe it's just time. Or just me.”

 

For a moment, Edgar thought Johnny wouldn't say anything, but then he sighed and leaned forward, bracing his elbows against his knees. “...I think we might have to consider that we've both been through some shit. Which, I think we learned today, tends to make all the difference in who someone is. I don't think it's possible for me to be exactly the same person I was before I died. You won't be either. And because we've been apart, you're going to notice it more.”

 

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it was wrong, I just – ”

 

“It's okay. _We're_ okay. It's still _me,_ I was just in charge of Hell for a while. And that... fucks with you a little.”

 

“Yeah. I get it. Plus the stuff with Todd and... all that.”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny swallowed and rubbed his neck where his key used to sit. “Either Pepito and I were _both_ going to lose what we loved, or no one was.” He shrugged. “That was the best I could think of.”

 

“It was a good idea.”

 

“Squee probably doesn't think so, but thanks.”

 

“You could have focused on just punishing Pepito. You did a good thing this way.”

 

Johnny shrugged. “I don't know about that. But I got to come home and not commit murder in at least one of my lifetimes, so I can live with it.”

 

“Maybe we could talk to Todd or something. 'No hard feelings', that kind of thing?”

 

“I don't want to talk to them,” Johnny said bitterly.

 

“Sure, that's fine too. Whatever you do is fine with me.”

 

Johnny smiled at him, but it was a bit like he thought Edgar was ridiculous. “Okay.”

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing. Honestly nothing. You're just... cute or something.”

 

Edgar grinned and his song took its first gasps of life in months. “God, you're alive and you remember and you're doing compliments.”

 

“Yeah, that was your cue to realize I'm an impostor and banish me from your house,” Johnny joked as he ran his fingers over his bare neck. He pressed his fingers between his collar bones and 'hrmph'd in frustration. “God, I can't get used to this thing being gone.”

 

“It's strange to see you without it. Like your neck is naked.”

 

Johnny nodded. “It feels like that too.” He tugged on Edgar's wrist. “Will you come with me a second?”

Edgar let himself be dragged along behind Johnny. “I would happily follow you anywhere at this point. The kitchen or back to Hell, it's all kind of the same to me right now.”

 

“It's just to my room, no dramatic sacrifice required.”

 

“What are we doing?”

 

“Just come on.”

 

The room was still mostly the same as it had been before Johnny's death, though Johnny had gone through some of it while not quite himself in an effort to find himself. Edgar sat on the bed while Johnny dug through his things with clear real knowledge of what they were. As much as Edgar _believed_ this was his Johnny, it was a great relief to see that he knew what his things were and where they'd been stored.

 

Johnny pulled out a set of keys and separated one from the ring. “Here, hold this,” he said, waving the key at Edgar. Edgar held it in his palm while Johnny opened a few craft boxes.

 

“Okay, really, what are you doing?”

 

“Looking for some string.”

 

Edgar looked closer at the key in his hand. “Is this the house key?”

 

“Yeah.” Johnny set next to him and took the key from his hand. He looped it onto a piece of red cord that looked to be the same as the kind that used to hold the key to Hell and then draped it around his neck. “Will you tie it in the back? I really do feel naked without this.”

 

Edgar reached up but then hesitated. “Are you making some uncomfortable comparisons here?”

 

Johnny laughed at him. “Yeah, welcome to New Hellburg, population: dork with glasses. I will rule you all with an iron fist.” He turned his back slightly toward Edgar and held onto the loose ends of the string behind his neck. “Come on.”

 

“Okay.”

 

This felt like returning to the real Johnny though it was a small gesture that had nothing to do with Johnny's memory at all. A few years ago, Edgar had been inspecting the knot stuck on Johnny's neck when they first met and now he was making its replacement with his own house key.

 

He wrapped his arms around Johnny's ribs when he finished the knot and hooked his chin over Johnny's shoulder.

 

“I'm so happy it's you.”

 

Johnny said nothing, but relaxed into the hold. Edgar could have easily spent at least the next several hours like that, if not forever. His thoughts weren't so keen to settle, however. Could he really just relax? Just be okay? Everything was happening at once, he didn't know what to address first, everything was important and so _nothing_ was except _everything_ was and –

 

“You're still freaking out,” Johnny said.

 

“Uh, sorry, you came back from the dead a few days ago and only just now remember me.”

 

Johnny grinned. “Okay, I guess that's acceptable.”

 

“I just keep thinking I have to tell everyone, I have to clean everything, I have to check the book and the basement, I – ”

 

_“We.”_

 

“What?”

 

“You mean _we_ have to tell them. We have to clean everything and go to the basement. _We_ have to do that shit.”

 

“Yeah.” He nodded, blinking away yet more overwhelmed tears. “Yeah. _We_ do. I just can't – There's so _much._ I want to have a day that's just _you_ where I don't have to be terrified or worried for a while.”

 

“I think that can be arranged.”

 

“Are you encouraging me to lock myself away and lie to my friends again?”

 

“No. I'm saying _we_ should.”

 

“Really? That's not selfish and horrible and – ?”

 

“Oh, it is. But we're still gonna do it.”

 

Edgar laughed and tears stung at his eyes. “That's definitely you.”

 

“Yeah, still me. But today, as far as anyone else knows, I'm still dead or brainless, got it?”

 

“Oh god, I'm gonna feel so guilty all day.”

 

“What's to be guilty about? Today, we're the only people in the world.”

 

 

“ _One day is one day less to live_  
I want you to be my sedative  
Sometimes when I drive my car  
I feel trapped like a bee inside a jar...”

 

 

They'd had days like this in the beginning, before Johnny knew Edgar felt anything for him and before Edgar was even sure he did. Songs and weird art projects and food they probably shouldn't eat combining with TV shows and deep conversation about topics that weren't often considered deep. All those times Edgar had wished himself into photos and now everything was so perfect he wondered if he'd finally done it.

 

Johnny told him about Hell, about what he was supposed to have been doing down there, about what he saw and how he got out. He'd seen what had happened to Jimmy to make him throw himself at Edgar and he'd seen Devi and Tenna decide what kind of thing their relationship was and he'd seen both these things kept secret.

 

“I probably shouldn't be telling you this shit, now that I think about it!” Johnny laughed.

 

“You were recently dead, I think we can forgive your judgment taking time to catch up.”

Johnny suddenly tugged on Edgar's sleeve and shook it. “Hey, hey, speaking of that! I want one of those shirts.”

 

“Shirts?”

 

“The ones that say 'Nny Is Not Dead'. I _need_ one.”

 

“Oh my god. From those assholes who made money from you dying?”

 

“Yeah, those assholes. I'll make Dib shut them down from the inside, tear the rug right out from under them and leave them broken. But first I want a shirt.”

 

Edgar smiled and god it was amazing to feel like smiling again. “We'll find one for you.”

 

“Can't wait. That's gonna be my new favorite shirt.”

 

“We should update the blog with just a picture of you wearing it.”

 

Johnny grinned and rocked his head back. “Fuck, _yes._ That is perfect. _You_ are perfect. When we go visit everyone, this is the first thing we're doing.”

 

“Whatever you want. Literally anything you want.”

 

 

“ _Grains of sand is all we are_  
_crawling on our manic star_  
_one tiny person and one shiny car  
__spinning on our manic star...”_

 

Johnny wanted to pretend the floor was lava, Johnny wanted see things again and aggressively _know_ what they were. He wanted to go to the basement, he wanted to hear everything Edgar had been afraid to tell him when he didn't remember. By the end of the day, Edgar was exhausted in a way he hadn't been for months. When Johnny was dead, Edgar had a shell of tired caked over layers of empty, miserable, lonely, pointless. With those gone, he could be just as physically tired as he'd been emotionally. This might be the kind of tired that would actually get him to sleep.

 

Maybe. Eventually. If he someday got used to having Johnny again.

“I feel like I've been awake for days,” Edgar said as he glanced at the stars outside the living room window.

 

Johnny looked at the game controller in his hands. “I feel like I've been asleep for months.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“It wasn't a competition, it was just an observation. Are you going to bed?”

 

“Well, I – this is – I don't want to –“

 

“I'll come with you, it's okay.”

 

“God, I'm sorry.”

 

“You don't have to apologize.”

 

 

 

“ _Time doesn't stand for anyone_  
_it doesn't matter what you've done_  
_I want to lose myself in you  
__Are you afraid of dying too...?”_

 

 

Things had shifted so much since Johnny's death, and though it was painful to be without him all that time, having him back the bedroom again was joyously familiar and strangely new. He'd become reluctantly used to no one else being there after a few months of sleeping on the side Johnny preferred, and he'd only done that after sleeping on his own side in denial had stopped providing any kind of comfort.

 

Johnny stood in the doorway in a big t-shirt and too-long pajama pants looking thoughtfully apprehensive.

 

A small ache surged in Edgar's heart. “We don't – you can stay in your room.”

 

“No, sorry, it's okay. I missed you, and I want to stay here, but it's been a while since I've done this.”

 

“Me too.”

 

“Aside from the occasional Jimmy, right?”

 

Edgar's heart sank and panic surged through his veins. “Oh god, no, not like that, I – ”

 

Johnny held his hands up. “No, no, sorry, shit, that was supposed to be a joke.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I'm having a little trouble with the filter between me and everything else.”

 

“I get it.”

 

“I'm not sure you do.” Johnny shook his head. “I still wonder why your head isn't like this.”

 

“I don't know?” Hopefully filter problems wouldn't be long term.

 

Johnny changed the subject immediately and cheerfully. “Am I still over there?” he asked, pointing to the far side of the bed.

 

“Unless you want to switch.”

 

“I think I'd feel better closer to the door.”

 

“Okay, sure.”

 

Edgar climbed to the other side of the bed and tried to project 'familiar and inviting' as hard as he could. _This shouldn't feel so alien._

 

Johnny silently sat next to him and drew his knees up to his chin. He gazed at the television on the dresser against the far wall, and though Edgar searched for one, Johnny gave no inviting signal nor one to keep Edgar away.

 

“You look like you don't want to be here,” Edgar said. “It's really okay if – ”

 

“I died here.”

 

Edgar let out a long breath. “Yes. But you also came back here.”

 

“Yeah, I know,” Johnny said, nodding. “Still, what do you think about moving the furniture tomorrow?”

 

Relieved by the mundane nature of what Johnny had said, Edgar laughed. “Yeah, I think we can figure something out.”

 

Johnny relaxed and showed a hint of a smile. “Thanks.”

 

“Want to hit the light?”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

The room flicked into darkness and nine months of everything being wrong finally lifted from Edgar's bones. With Johnny next to him where he should have been the day he died, Edgar relaxed and let go of tension he had long forgot he was carrying.

 

“Good night. I'll see you in the morning, right?”

 

“That's my plan.”

 

“Okay. Good. I love you.”

 

Johnny laughed in the dark next to him. “I love you, too.”

 

“Why is that funny?”

 

“It just is. Good night.”

 

Johnny shifted under the blankets and settled in snugly on his side of the bed. He probably wouldn't be actually asleep for a long time, but he was trying to be.

 

Edgar knew he wasn't going to sleep well if at all, even though everything in him was screaming from exhaustion. His limbs were spent and begging for rest, but his heart was still recovering all the pieces of the future Edgar had mourned since Johnny died. Every minute or so, he'd feel all over again that Johnny was there an alive and that he would be there for Edgar's birthday, and wouldn't miss his own again, and they could all live longer than their previous selves _together._

 

Edgar eventually fell into something like a half-conscious dream but every hour or so he shot up in a panic that nothing had been real. Each time, Johnny was still there, curled up at the edge of the bed like he needed more space, but still there. Unfortunately for Johnny, just being there wasn't enough. A little after three in the morning, Edgar frantically grabbed Johnny's shoulder in terror. Johnny flailed and nearly hit Edgar in the face and was _alive._

 

_“Fuck, what?!”_

 

“God, sorry,” Edgar said almost immediately. “I wasn't sure you were breathing.”

 

Johnny swallowed and blinked blearily. “I was, but I'm not sure I am now.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

Johnny let out a slow breath, nodded, and turned over. “It's okay.”

 

“Um!” It was dumb to ask, it was dumb to bother him, and yet things twisted and fluttered in Edgar's chest anyway. “Do you still – is it still you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Just tell me something you remember?”

 

“God, is every night going to be like this?” Thankfully, he laughed while he said it. “Um, I met you in the choir room? Did you tell me that?”

 

“Sort of?”

 

He yawned, and tried again. “Um, then I called you and it was raining and the house was really fucking clean. I Love Belarus? We fell off the table.”

 

“Oh, thank god, you're you.”

 

Johnny nodded against his pillow and pulled his shoulder up to his ear. “I am.”

 

“I'm sorry, I panicked.”

 

“It's okay. Glad to see you too. Am I clear to sleep again?”

 

“Yeah. Sorry.”

 

“It's still okay.”

 

“Okay.”

 

Edgar checked that Johnny was still breathing two more times during the night before Johnny gave up and stayed awake with him.

 

“I'm not going anywhere,” Johnny told him.

 

“You didn't know you were going to die,” Edgar replied. “It might happen again.”

 

“I really don't think it is. I sort of gave Pepito the impression that this was my final decision on the whole Hell thing.”

 

“He doesn't care, though. He didn't care enough to stop you from dying. What if this all is just going to keep happening? What if it isn't safe to just relax about it?”

 

Johnny frowned. “We're gonna have to find some way for you to, because you have been having a non-stop freakout at least since I came back.”

 

Edgar was ready to protest, but Johnny was right. Ever since Johnny died and especially since he came back, Edgar had been unable to stop thinking about _everything_. It was the same with Johnny dead, though when that was true Edgar just didn't _feel_ anything on top of it.

 

“I don't know how.”

 

“I don't either. We'll ask Jimmy. Maybe he has a book.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“You don't sound okay with that either.”

 

“It feels weird.”

 

“It's not a moral judgment on you or anything. It is totally reasonable to be freaking out. This entire thing is bullshit. It just seems like it's kind of overwhelming.”

 

“It's not that, it's – it's things feeling real. Like things just become normal again. We just go back to everything, we just ask Jimmy if he's read things about weird random symptoms, he goes back to trying to kiss us both, Tenna and Devi do their thing and tell no one and we pretend not to know and we bother Dib occasionally and drive off in the van and it's just like you weren't gone, like you weren't dead, like this whole thing didn't change the whole world for me.”

 

“It won't be like that. Even if we do normal shit, things still changed for us. At the very least, we're going to have conversations now that include the words, 'Oh yeah, that's when Nny was dead.'”

 

“Just, shouldn't I feel okay? You're alive and you're healthy and you remember me and everything is still here, but I still feel... freaked out.”

 

“People aren't designed to do anything we've just done. They don't come back from the dead, or deal and then undeal with someone else doing that. We're both gonna be not okay for a while. It took a while to function when I died, right? So it should take a while to undo all that too.”

 

Edgar exhaled slowly. “That... makes sense. You don't mind me being not okay for a while?”

 

“I'd rather be not okay with you than anyone else.”

 

“Me too.”

 

 

“ _Grains of sand is all we are_  
_crawling on our manic star_  
_one tiny person and one shiny car  
__spinning on our manic star...”_

 

 

 

In the morning, while Edgar was in the shower, a voice slipped in through the window and wrapped itself around Johnny.

 

“Hello again.”

 

Johnny had his knife out and pointed toward Pepito's smoky form on the windowsill before he'd even blinked. “Get away from me.”

 

“Easy, easy,” Pepito said, holding up his hands. “We're all friends here.”

 

“You keep saying that.”

 

“And one fine day you'll believe me.”

 

Johnny shook the knife. “What do you want?”

 

“I just wanted to make sure you were aware of everything that happened.”

 

“I am, no thanks to you.”

 

Pepito blinked curiously at him for a moment. “Oh, you mean the memory! That was all you, I'm afraid. You should have been more careful with your words.”

 

“You knew what I meant.”

 

“Of course I did. But I told you about my kind and words. I can't just elect to take the nicest way out; I'm the _son of Satan_. Well done getting it back, however.”

 

“Yeah. Yay.”

 

“What I actually wanted to tell you was about the thing chasing you.”

 

Johnny's heart sank and that particular string of notes echoed once more in his head. He lowered the knife, though he didn't exactly mean to. “The thing from the wall?”

 

“Well, partly. You know you weren't supposed to escape it, right?”

 

“Yeah, I was supposed to get eaten and let it eat everyone else too, right? Fuck you.”

 

“No. They would have been fine. Unfortunately, you ran away from it. So when you died, it didn't go with you like it was supposed to. I got a bit of flack on the other side for this.”

 

“Wow, I'm _so_ sorry for you, that's _terrible_ that I _inconvenienced_ you like that. Can't _imagine_ what that is like.”

 

Pepito frowned and crossed his arms. “Look, I'm just warning you.”

 

“You know what?” Johnny gestured with the knife. “You spent a lot of time 'warning' me and Edgar that I was going to _die_ and accomplishing fuck all doing that, so excuse me if I lack the fucks you want me to give about this situation.”

 

“Here is the difference now: I can tell you that it is still coming. That it is not alone. That the only way we know to get it where it needs to go is for it to be taken down with a person. That the world becomes backed up and unstable if it doesn't get expelled.”

 

“My _head_ is backed up and unstable, I don't care about everyone else.”

 

“You will,” Pepito replied. “Just wait.”

 

“Then what is this thing?”

 

“It's part of a system we're trying to get rid of, but it is terribly hard to remove infrastructure that has been in place for millennia. You were supposed to be the thing that flushed the system clean by dying with it.”

 

Parts of Johnny's memory flared and raged against the rest of him. Memories of memories that he'd thought were memories of dreams.

 

Pepito continued with no regard to Johnny's brains. “The powers that be were not happy about you, but I was told that they'd 'taken care of the problem' when they found out you'd died without taking it with you. I'm cautioning you, with your _insistence_ on living, that I cannot say for sure what it will do now or what they have put in place.”

 

“You just said it's taken care of.”

 

“Perhaps you don't understand who these assurances are coming from.”

 

“No, I don't, because you never fucking tell me anything. Why should I think this is anything more than your usual bullshit?”

 

“These are the same people responsible for the state of your current life. Who thought a half-muttered agreement between people who were scared and _dead_ was a deal. That parentless and invisible and haunted by music was good enough because you were going to die anyway. So unless they found someone else perfectly suited to die with it instead of you, it will still be coming.”

 

“Pepito, I don't give a single shit if someone else dies instead of me. If they are not Edgar, Devi, Tenna, or Jimmy, they are _disposable._ Go the fuck home. Tell Squee I said hi.”

 

“What makes you think he wants to hear from you?”

 

_“What are you doing here?”_

 

Pepito frowned theatrically and placed his hand over his chest like he'd been wounded. “Oh, that's not nice.”

 

“ _I'm_ not nice. Go home, Pepito. And, just so we understand each other, if you somehow get the idea that it would be funny to take Edgar as my replacement, I _will_ come to get him.”

 

“That's adorable. What good do you think you'll be without Todd's key?”

 

 _“I'll come to get him_ ,” Johnny repeated.

 

Pepito vanished before his word finished. “Noted.”

 

Edgar walked into the room as if on cue seconds after Pepito vanished. He was still wet and wrapped in a towel.

 

“There you are. I thought you might come and just sit and then I was worried, but then I didn't want to be – Whoa, are you okay?”

 

Johnny blinked. “What?”

 

“You're holding a knife.”

 

“Oh.” He looked down at his hand and pocketed the knife. “Yeah. Fucking Pepito was just here.”

 

“Oh my god, why didn't you yell? Are you okay? He's not trying to take you back, is he?”

 

Johnny pocketed the knife. “I'm fine, everything's fine. He just doesn't seem to like talking to me with you around.”

 

Edgar clutched his towel tighter. “What did he say?”

 

“That the wall thing still exists, that it's probably still after me.” He shrugged and bit his lip and even _dying_ had not given him a break and it might not be the last time he'd have to do it. _Shit._

 

“Oh god, I'm so sorry,” Edgar said, beginning a new spiral into freak out mode. “This is my fault, I – ”

 

“I want to sing again.”

 

Panic flashed over Edgar like a spotlight. “What? He just told you it's still after you!”

 

“That doesn't change that I want to sing.” _That doesn't change that I might as well, because I don't know what happens now._

 

“What did he say it was doing? How could you sing without it coming after you?”

 

“He said it was supposed to die with me and that it might be trying to get to me again.”

 

“And you want to invite that by singing? Nny, this is really not a good idea.”

 

“He said the world is going to be unstable if it stays out.”

 

“So? Who cares about the rest of the world? What about _you_?”

 

Johnny smiled. “I really like you.” _You have always been good. I agree on that._

 

“I like you too, that's why I don't want wall monsters coming after you!”

 

“It's going to be fine. I think it's going to be different now.”

 

“Because you died?”

“Because I'm not three people competing for one skull like I was before the last time I sang. It's all been combined, it – ” He waved his hand until he hit on the right analogy. “It's like salad dressing.”

 

Edgar shook his head in dismay. “Do you think you're strong enough to handle it if it gets in your head? If the others have more influence than you think they do? If the fucking metaphorical dressing separates?”

 

Johnny shrugged. “Then I shake the bottle. I don't think I'm going to get any stronger than 'freshly resurrected.'”

 

“I don't want to lose you again.” Edgar said softly.

 

“I don't want that either. But I also want to sing.”

 

“What if it kills you?”

 

“I know it sounds weird, but I don't think it can. I think it just sort of needs to be _around_ when I do. Otherwise it would have tried harder in the house, you know?”

 

“But what if it does?”

 

He saw clouds and stone and dark smoke and the glint of light from a discarded necklace quickly covered up by not seeing anything at all in the face of the first person he'd ever loved and shook the images away. “There are worse things. And if there aren't, I've had practice being dead. I could undo it again.”

 

“Will you please think about this for a while?” Edgar looked so tiny and frail wearing anxiety and an old bath towel. Johnny smiled at him.

 

“Trust me,” he said, briefly bringing their faces close. “And put some pants on. Devi hates it when people visit her without pants.”

 

 

“ _Let's love like there is no tomorrow  
__shelter each other from the pain and sorrow_

 

_manic star_

_manic star”_

 

 

“You know the funny part will be if they're more excited about your face than my brains,” Johnny said as he and Edgar approached Devi's house.

 

“I doubt they're even going to notice my face.”

 

“I think it's a dramatic change. _I'd_ notice.”

 

“Yeah, but you're my – I'm your boyfriend.”

 

Johnny laughed. “I don't know what to call me either. Want to make something up? Genderless Romantic Associate. Or we can do like Tenna and just use 'comrade' when we're confused.”

 

“I'm not calling you 'comrade'.”

 

“You like 'associate' better? Or 'familiar!' I can be your witchy animal friend.”

 

“I'm kissing my animal friend now? Did I miss that Disney movie?”

 

“ _Beauty and the Beast_?”

 

Edgar laughed a little, finally breaking through some of his rapidly accumulating worry about _everything_. “I think you're trying to be funny to calm me down again.”

 

“Yes. My next move was to wonder dramatically which of us is the beauty. Is it not working?”

 

“A little, but I think it would work better if I weren't terminally genre savvy.”

 

“Aww. That's the cutest thing I've ever heard.” Johnny was smiling and bouncy and so much like he'd been when Edgar first met him. “But okay, stealth funny to dodge Edgar's Television Senses, got it.”

 

Devi's house loomed over them and Johnny eagerly tugged on Edgar's hand when he hesitated to step up to the door.

 

“It's okay,” Johnny said. “They're not going to be mad at you.”

 

“I'm still having trouble with the idea that _you_ aren't.”

 

“I'm not. Totally the opposite.”

 

Edgar shrugged. “I'll get used to it. Just knock.”

 

“Oh. We're _knocking_? I was just going to let myself in.” He held up a small cluster of keys. “Since I can, you know.”

 

Edgar's face hurt when he grinned. “Oh!”

 

Johnny unlocked the door without hesitation. Every thing he did was just more reassuring glorious proof that it was really him, really the Johnny Edgar loved and really the Johnny who loved Edgar and not just an empty person pretending as hard as he could so that his friends would stop waiting to like him.

 

Jimmy stuck his head out of the door to the upstairs apartment section of the house. Before Devi and Tenna took it over, it had been converted into apartments and Devi and Tenna were casually working on turning it back again. “The hell was that? What are you guys doing here?”

 

Johnny lit up. “Jimmy!”

 

Jimmy blinked, startled by such a warm reception. “Uh, hi?”

 

“What are _you_ doing here?”

 

“Just... staying a while.” He glanced at Edgar. “What's going on? He's being weird.”

 

Johnny snapped his fingers up at Jimmy. “I'm right here, thank you. And I'm just fucking fine.”

 

Tenna's voice echoed out from behind him. “Is that Johnny and Edgar?”

 

Jimmy did not look sure. “Yeah?”

 

Johnny took the steps up to Jimmy two at a time. “So hey, do you remember recycling salad?”

 

Jimmy's eyes went wide.

 

“Or I guess you were more interested in the scissors I used on your arm,” Johnny continued. “The ones with the black handles from the choir room. With the smiley face sticker.”

 

“You – you remember? _You_ you? For real?” He looked at Edgar, desperate for confirmation. Edgar only smiled at him.

 

Johnny bowed like he'd just finished a clever performance. “Ta da.”

 

Jimmy screeched and jumped forward, throwing himself against Johnny and hugging him before Edgar could process what was happening and stop it. Johnny winced and stumbled backwards, but actually hugged Jimmy back. Edgar had never seen him hug Jimmy, not even while goofing off or on stage.

 

“Wow, what is going on out there?!” Tenna popped her head out of the door and rocked backward when she saw the hug. “Jesus, he's hugging people. He really has lost his mind, hasn't he?”

 

“He's okay!” Jimmy screamed as he let go of Johnny. “He remembered recycling salad!”

 

Tenna narrowed her eyes. “Really?”

 

“And the dinosaur full of rocks,” Johnny told Tenna.

 

Edgar did not recognize this reference either, but Tenna let loose a sound not unlike her squeaky toy as she took a leap through the door. She reached out to Johnny and he let her hug him too.

 

“I'm so fucking sorry,” she said, pulling away and gripping his shoulders. “I didn't talk to you before you died, I was scared and it was fucked up and I didn't know what to say and I just thought I'd see you again and it would go away like everything else! Then you were dead and it was just stuck and I felt fucking sick – ”

 

“Ten, Ten, we're good. I don't care. I wouldn't have talked to me either.”

 

Jimmy pulled Devi out with the others. She stared at the scene in front of her, baffled. “What are you guys doing? Is he _hugging_ people?”

 

“No,” Johnny said cheerily. “People are hugging me. But I'll live. Can I borrow a pen?”

 

Devi glanced at Jimmy and Tenna. “What's going on?”

 

“He knows who we are!” Tenna grabbed Devi's hand and bounced around with it. “Like _for real_ knows!”

 

Devi raised an eyebrow as Tenna flailed her arm around. “And he _wants a pen_. He suddenly remembers his entire life, but he wants a pen.”

 

Johnny smiled at her. “Trust me.”

 

 

“ _Grains of sand is all we are_  
_crawling on our manic star  
__one tiny person and one shiny car”_

 

 

Inside, Devi found Johnny a piece of paper and a pen though she was clearly still skeptical when she handed them over.

 

“He remembered the dinosaur full of rocks,” Tenna enthused, grabbing Devi's arm while she watched Johnny with the pen.

 

“And recycling salad!” Jimmy added.

 

“I don't know either of these stories,” Edgar said.

 

Tenna's eyes and mouth widened with glee. “I know! That's how I know it's him!”

 

“Good,” Edgar replied, slightly overwhelmed.

 

Tenna didn't notice in her enthusiasm. “It's so weird that you don't know them, though, it feels like you were there for everything now. We'll tell you later, they're good.”

 

They grew quiet while they watched Johnny draw what was slowly becoming another drawing of Devi.

 

Jimmy nudged Edgar's foot with his own while Johnny drew. “Hey.”

 

Edgar looked first at his foot, then at Jimmy. “Yes?”

 

“Your face looks good. I mean – the stuff you put on your face. Or, the stuff you didn't take off, I guess, I – Shit.”

 

Tenna sputtered trying to restrain laughter. “The word you want is 'beard'.”

 

“Fuck me. Yeah. Beard. Nice.”

 

Edgar said 'Thanks,' at the same moment Johnny did.

 

Tenna leaned in to look at Johnny's face. “You are still beard free, my friend.”

 

“This was his idea,” Edgar explained. “It was like backseat shaving.”

 

“So what, he just suddenly remembered he hated your face?” Devi asked. “Is that what did it?”

 

Johnny looked up from his drawing for a moment. “What the fuck? Both of you? It was an artistic suggestion in the face of opportunity, holy shit.”

 

“I've accepted it,” Edgar said. “He loves me even if he doesn't love my face.”

 

“I'm about to go right back to Hell if I hear any more of this.”

 

Jimmy gasped softly. “You were really in Hell?”

 

“Oh,” Johnny said. “Uh, yeah. We'll get to that in a minute. Here.” He handed his drawing to Devi. There were extra eyes and swirls and possibly dripping blood. Everything that his prior attempt had lacked, the things that made his art _his_ was present in this drawing. Across the top it featured a speech balloon that read, 'Look at that dumb kid up there.'

 

“Oh my god,” Devi said, looking up from the drawing. “It's really you. 'That dumb kid up there.'”

 

“Look at that dumb kid _down there_ ,” Johnny answered.

 

“What is this?” Edgar asked.

 

“The first thing anyone said about me,” Johnny said.

“And the first thing anyone but Tenna heard me say,” Devi said.

 

Johnny smiled smugly at her. “The first conversation I had with another person.”

 

Devi laughed and wiped her eye with her hand. “It was insults.”

 

“You started it,” he said.

 

She kicked him, leaned back in her chair, and then exhaled sharply and hugged him. “If Jimmy got to, I get to,” she said into his coat.

 

“I'll allow it,” Johnny said. “Nice to see you, too.”

 

She pulled away, blinking rapidly. “Will you tell us what the fuck happened?”

 

Johnny ran a hand over his head and nodded slowly. “Yeah, yeah. I'll try.”

 

“What made you remember?” Tenna asked suddenly. The question stabbed into Edgar's lungs and he wanted to melt into the floor.

 

“It's a secret,” Johnny said, holding up one finger. “I can't tell you, because that's cheating. But you should find out soon.”

 

Tenna narrowed her eyes. “You guys kissed or something again, right? More fairy tale shit?”

 

Johnny turned his up nose. “As though I'd tell you.”

 

“Then that is _definitely_ what happened,” Tenna insisted. “I will accept nothing else.”

 

“If you must,” Johnny said, feigning delicate disgust.

 

“Okay, gross, thanks,” Devi said. “More about Hell, please.”

 

Johnny told the story again, this time with less breathless emotional detail. He left things out here and there, usually if it was likely to upset someone, but otherwise told the others what he'd told Edgar about Pepito and the windows to each of them and the key.

 

“You saw _everything_?” Jimmy asked, nervously twisting the things on the wrists and fidgeting with his lip ring.

 

“I might have. But I don't remember all of it,” Johnny lied.

 

“Oh.” Jimmy swallowed. “Okay.”

 

Johnny continued his story with the same gentle lying. Edgar was the only other person who would know the things he was omitting, though now he wondered what had been kept from _him_ thanks to Johnny's surprising mercy.

 

Even more surprising was that Johnny did not extend the same mercy to himself. When it came time to tell them he'd been prepared to murder a relative innocent to come home, he didn't hesitate and didn't stop for comments until he was finished with the pseudo confession.

 

“...so Pepito let me go to spare Todd, and then when I got home I tried to talk to Edgar and couldn't remember him. And here we are.”

 

Jimmy had been sitting with enchanted wide eyes since the moment it sounded like Johnny was planning to harm someone. “Oh. _Wow.”_

 

“Yeah,” Johnny said, clasping his hands in his lap. “So if you're all planning to abandon me in terror, this would be the socially comfortable time to do it.”

 

Devi kicked him. “Fuck you, we're not doing that.”

 

“Aren't I scarier now?” he asked.

 

“We all got scarier since you left,” she said. “And we've all done shit. Shit you probably saw. I'm not scared of you, asshole. You're on our side.”

 

Johnny narrowed his eyes. “You don't think Squee was 'on our side'?”

 

“No. He was in cahoots with fucking Pepito no matter what he did or didn't do. He's responsible too.”

 

“I would have done it,” Jimmy said.

 

Tenna tilted her head. “You what?”

 

“I would have tried to kill him too. If I were Nny or if someone told me it would have got him out. I would have done it.”

 

“Me too,” Edgar said suddenly. “I thought about killing _myself_ the whole time he was dead, but if someone had told me I could trade someone else for Nny? I would have done it. Without question.”

 

“Everyone else is disposable,” Johnny laughed.

Devi nudged Tenna. “You okay?”

 

Tenna nodded slowly. “Yeah. I think I am. It made sense to be scared before, though, right?”

 

“Yeah, Ten, yeah.”

 

“It still does,” Johnny told her. “We all just told you we'd casually murder strangers for each other, so.”

 

Tenna nodded more decisively. “Right, right. No, I think I'm good. I think I might – I mean, if it was us or some random other person?”

 

She glanced cautiously at Jimmy who nodded enthusiastically.

 

“Yeah,” Tenna said. “Definitely the other random asshole, then. I'm good.” She bounced her shoulder against Devi's. “I'm surprised you are, though. You were the one screaming that no one else sees the terrible shit before he died.”

 

“You people still don't,” Devi said. “But I've been thinking a lot since he died, and I think I've re-calibrated a little. Shifts in perspective, seeing what this shit does to us, seeing things from the eyes of the virus instead of the organism, that kind of shit. So yeah: everyone else is disposable.”

 

Johnny smiled at them fondly, relieved. “So I'm not being kicked out, then, that's good.”

 

Tenna laughed. “Where would we kick you out _to_? There's either here with us or no where. You have us, or you don't exist.”

 

“Good to know you feel that way,” he said. “On a related note: T-shirts.”

 

Devi raised her eyebrows and blinked rapidly. “T-shirts. Really?”

 

“Since we're all feeling so Fucked Up Musketeers about everything, I need you guys to help me shut down some assholes making shirts, but not before getting me one of the shirts.”

 

Devi clicked her tongue. “Well then. That's definitely him.”

 

Tenna grinned. “Yeah.”

 

Johnny leaned back in his seat. “I'm going to choose this time when people are pretending I'm not in the room to let you know that I'm going to sing again.”

 

Jimmy bit his lip. “Can you do that?”

 

“I willed myself out of Hell. And was in charge of it,” Johnny told him. “I can do anything. Fucking watch me.”

 

 

“ _Don't know how I got this scar_  
Crawling on our manic star  
_on a ride that leads so far  
__hanging on our manic star”_

 

 

Jimmy announced something was happening via cryptic blog post and Dib linked to it from his website. Tenna couldn't stop smiling while applying makeup, and while she apologized for being rusty, the work turned out to be among her best. Jimmy jumped at every loud noise and the others asked Edgar several times why he was so quiet. Johnny appreciated their nerves on a factual level, but he suspected he wasn't feeling the same thing they were. He also suspected he might never feel things like anyone else ever again.

 

When he last sang with his memory intact he'd mixed at least partly with the others. All his experiences were filtered through three sets of eyes, through three broken heads. He knew which filter was _him_ , but the others contributed. Maybe if he'd let the wall monster take him like Pepito said, the fusion would have been complete. Maybe it would have taken his other selves away. Maybe singing would set him free. Maybe singing would be even worse.

 

He could sing now, just to see, but that wasn't a show, that wasn't dramatic, that wasn't seizing everything in front of everyone who could see him do it. This way was declaration, the way it should be, not gingerly dipping a toe in the shallow end. Quietly singing to himself in a dingy back room was not returning from the dead. Risking that his voice/head combo was still a lighthouse for ambiguous evil in front of people who foolishly adored him definitely was.

 

“Are you sure you don't want to try this out not in front of people?” Devi asked, suddenly echoing Johnny's own thoughts.

 

“No, but that's what I'm doing.”

 

Devi bit her lip. “Nny, what if something happens? What if – ?”

 

“Then they get a _really_ _interesting_ show.”

 

“I should have stopped worrying about you a long time ago, but I still do this shit.”

 

Johnny gave a theatrical shrug. “Hey, I died once. Everything else is easy.”

 

“I'm just saying this could all go downhill really fast. That is way more people than we expected and if you go all 'three brains' on them, we could be fighting off throngs of teenage girls for their own good.”

 

Jimmy cracked his knuckles. “We can take 'em.”

 

“Oh really?” Edgar said. “How many you think you got?”

 

“Oh, like two. Maybe three.”

 

“Great, if we all team up, we could mess up approximately six teenage girls. Maybe an apathetic convenience store clerk if we're feeling really lucky.”

 

Tenna leaned away from the curtain. She'd had some fun with the makeup on her own face, giving herself her gold star and some dramatic eye makeup that made her eyes look a bit sunken in. “You guys ready to do this? They're climbing the walls out there.”

 

“Hopefully only six of them,” Edgar said.

 

“We're ready,” Johnny said.

 

Devi shook her head and looked at Tenna in defeat. “Apparently we're ready. Cue the teeming masses.”

 

Edgar elbowed Johnny gently. “You sure you're okay?”

 

 _I love this one. I am okay with this one but he does not touch me. This one is dead._ “Don't worry, I'm fine.”

 

“You sure?”

 

_“Trust me.”_

 

 

“ _spinning on the manic star”_

 

 

The crowd screamed and clapped with renewed intensity as each member of the group stepped out to the stage and with the applause each of their songs screamed a little more brightly. It had just happened, and he remembered not knowing, not hearing, but it seemed impossible that he ever couldn't. Those songs were right, they were what Johnny knew best of the people he kept around him. Without those, they were alien to him. Without those, they were hardly there.

 

“ _coming from a manic star...”_

 

A sense of unease settled in Johnny's bones as Edgar stepped through last and left Johnny alone on the wrong side of the curtain. The cheering for Edgar was louder than any of the others. He'd refused to be seen or spoken to since Johnny's death, so this little gathering was going to be the first time they'd seen Johnny or Edgar in nearly a year's time.

 

Though they were not expecting to see Johnny again.

 

“Hi, guys!” Tenna's voice echoed around him as she addressed the crowd Johnny could not see. “Glad to see everyone! There's, uh... shit, there's a lot more of you now. How many of you can see anyone but me up here?”

 

“ _She's got technicolor shoes_  
  
Untied, laces trailing  
  
But that's okay, I'm with the band, baby  
  
I'll follow you anyway.”

 

There was mild applause.

 

“Wow, so some of you chose a weird day to try us out. Anyway, I'm Tenna, I'm not cool enough to be on stage usually, but I'm responsible for how these assholes look, mostly, so you've all seen what I do.” There was a loud squeak and a small ripple of displeasure passed through the audience. “This is Spooky. He's glad to see you all, too. Everyone say hi to Spooky.”

 

There was a distant voice, but Johnny couldn't make out what they were saying.

 

“We're getting there, hang on. We know why you're here. I'm gonna pass you over to my other friends here and then we'll talk a bit about our dead people problem.”

 

Light and shadow flickered under the curtain as Tenna walked the microphone to the next person in line.

 

“ _So start up the fire_

_and turn on all the lights_

_pull yourselves together_

_and get ready for a fight_

_because I've never been hot enough_

_and I aim to start.”_

 

“This feels good, huh?” There were several large cheers for Jimmy and he laughed into the mic. “I missed you guys too. It's been kind of a weird time for us without Nny for so long, and we all did some dumb shit, but, you know how that goes. But we think we can play for you again.”

 

The audience approved wholeheartedly as the light shifted again and Devi took the mic.

 

 

“ _Cry ‘blasphemy’, cry ‘fuck you’_

_But don’t bother to change_

_Because it’s all a work in progress, dear_

_And we’re all bound to be a little strange.”_

 

 

“I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to say,” she said. “We didn't exactly rehearse this part. But hi, I guess. I'm Devi, but I think you all know that.”

 

“Shit, was I supposed to introduce myself?” Jimmy whispered.

 

Tenna hushed him. “You're fine, let her talk.”

 

“This has been the strangest year and a half of my life,” Devi continued. “People dying, people _almost_ dying, aliens, Satan, _drumming_. And now this – which I guess you don't know yet. But trust me, when you see it, you'll know what I'm talking about. Just try to contain yourselves, okay? We can avoid having to pay for any damage you guys do because we don't exist, but we're sure as fuck not getting invited back if you blow something up.”

 

People laughed and the mic was passed again. There was cheering before Edgar said anything at all.

 

 

“ _looks like the neighbors think I'm scary too_

_and I have never had such fun_

_when the world you know is scared of you_

_you have nothing to run from”_

 

 

“Hello,” he said when the sound died down a bit. “Thanks.”

 

The cheering spiked again and he struggled to start his next sentenced.

 

“I've been trying to think of what I could say for the last few days, but to be honest, I didn't think of anything, I just thought _a lot_. I've been told that's _freaking out_. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to say and I'm _saying_ it. But I guess, yeah, this was also the strangest year of _my_ life. The best things that have ever happened to me happened in the last year, but so did the worst, so I don't know how to feel half the time. Mostly tired. Maybe panic.”

 

The audience laughed but Edgar continued through their laughter.

 

“Even if I don't know how to feel, I do know that some of you made sure my life was a living Hell when Nny died, so thanks for that. It's okay now. Not that I forgive you, or that I'll forget, but it doesn't matter anymore.”

 

“It wasn't _everybody,”_ Jimmy defended.

 

“It was enough. But like I said, it doesn't matter much anymore. I'll always remember, but it's kind of a moot point now, huh?”

 

“We should probably show you what we're talking about,” Tenna said.

 

The curtain rippled in front of Johnny and Edgar leaned through just head, shoulders and one arm. “Come on. I don't think we have a better intro for you than that.”

 

Johnny grinned. “Nothing better than insulting the audience?”

 

Edgar looked a bit sheepish and started to apologize. “It just started – ”

 

“It's perfect.”

 

Edgar took Johnny's hand and led him out to the stage with the others. Johnny squinted against the light, shielding his eyes until he adjusted to the stage set up. As he adapted to the light, the audience adapted to him existing. His boots echoed over the stage floor and for several moments Johnny stood at the center of the stage in silence wearing two pieces of clothing that existed because he'd gone to Hell – one long black coat, and one 'Nny is Not Dead' t-shirt. The mic was heavy in his hand, like the flashlight he'd conjured in Hell. The memory was so vivid that the light and people all around him vanished for a moment and startled him again when they returned.

 

“Hi,” he said to the crowd. “I thought I'd come back and tell you guys some stories about ruling over Hell.”

 

The audience exploded all around him, joined by one of the speakers at the back. People screamed at the speaker, at at him, at both. Delighted, Johnny laughed into them microphone and the sound surged again.

 

“So, I was dead for a while,” he said casually. “I don't really recommend it if you can avoid it. But since I know what it's like and I've taken that bullet for you guys, I can give you a good idea of what you're in for should you decide to do this 'dying' nonsense.”

 

“He's not the real Nny!” came from the back.

 

“Heh. Okay, that's fair. Should I sing something for you? Will that do it?”

 

The others gasped behind him, not ready for the singing just yet, but the pull inside him was far louder than the sudden concern of his friends.

 

His first notes were those that had been sung in his head since he'd first left town. The ones that had been static, and running engines, and a woman possessing a blog. Just a string of 'oh's, just the notes that had unraveled him once before while running from a past life's demons.

 

A few people clapped in approval, not that he was looking for it.

 

Nothing screamed to get out of his head because everything was already _out_.

 

 

“ _We paint the screams and watch the time_

_sitting in our world outside_

_the colors come ringing from the wall_

_here our unseen free for all_

 

_blood on the floor and we're coming home_

_sky underground and we're coming home_

_fortunes devoured, a bridge to the stars_

_hour by hour, we see what we are”_

 

 

Maybe some evil thing lurking in a hotel had woken up again, maybe some deranged brain woman would start updating Jimmy's blog, but Johnny didn't feel any of it. What he felt instead was three things at once, contradictory and completely true. Euphoria over finally being able to sing again, mocking scorn that this meant anything at all, and a revulsion at the idea of performing for others' enjoyment.

 

Death had not been a reset button. Death hadn't stopped the others from being part of him again, it had only showed him briefly that he was himself with or without them. Johnny C was Johnny C whether the blood on his clothes was real or not.

 

The audience cheered for him, maybe accepting him as who he he said he was, but the sound of their enthusiasm mingled with things he could barely grasp. Familiar and alien and deeply personal but introduced to him by someone else. He heard his name as though hearing it from underwater.

 

The melody was just like Edgar had played it. Just like he remembered hearing it for the first time _both_ times, and yet far better than what Edgar had produced.

 

When he turned around he saw the others hearing it too, expressions of terror and wonder on their blood and glitter faces, hands pressed to their ears. Except Edgar, who was grinning at him through the dead facade.

 

Devi's mouth hung open before she was able to look at Johnny and form words. “Is that... is that _you_?”

 

Johnny laughed and the audience settled, waiting for him to say or do _something_. Johnny's song floated through the songs of his friends and mixed with them, whether it was clashing or playing or teasing or fitting perfectly. The silence in the room grew as the song solidified itself and Johnny waited and waited and then realized what it was missing. He took in the overwhelmed and confused smiles on his friends and could not remember the last time things felt so much in his control, so much like _him_.

 

_And when he heard the song, he knew who he was, and he knew who he was because he heard the song._

 

Johnny's words echoed over the whole room, though he directed them at Edgar. “It's not bad for having no words.”

 

Seeing the others' tears through his own, Johnny turned back to the audience. “Why don't we play something for you?”

 

They cheered for him, for songs they didn't know, and for people they could collectively barely see.

 

Edgar was suddenly beside him, hand over the microphone.

 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

 

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Johnny laughed. _“Trust me.”_

 

Edgar shook his head, but laughed too. “Okay. Then what are we playing? What do you want?”

 

Johnny glanced at the audience, over his shoulder at Devi, Tenna, and Jimmy, and then back at the dork in the glasses doing his best to look scary. He started with a whisper, but didn't quite keep it there. It would spark some rumors, certainly, but at that moment, Johnny didn't care, because Edgar was there and Edgar was perfect and the song drifted through all of it.

 

“ _All I really want_

_is my TV and you”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Conjure One - "Manic Star"  
> plus snips of The Homicides' "Outside" and, of course, "My TV and You"
> 
> I chose Manic Star because I was given the song around the same time as the songs that really got the original SWAN off to a start. My TV and You, Anyplace Anywhere Anytime, Center of the Sun, Song Without a Name, Video Kid... I wanted something that felt like that time, something that felt like 2005 again for me because that's where this thing was born. I didn't want something too celebratory because Edgar and Nny are still coping, nothing too sappy because they just aren't like that, but nothing sad because, hey, Johnny is fucking alive. Something unobtrusive but strong. The more I realized what I was looking for, the more Manic Star was right. It's been in my list of songs to use in SWAN for probably ten years. Maybe it isn't as satisfying as ending on 'Song Without A Name' in some respects, but I think where both songs were used feels better to me this way. The last 'new' song in the story is by the same people who did the first one. Johnny's last words are lyrics, just like his first ones. And of course the lyrics he does say have become something of a theme with him and Edgar. It feels really good to do that. 
> 
> It felt right to let all this stuff be its own chapter. It's honestly just Edgar and Nny coping, meeting the others again, and going on a stage, but it feels bigger than that. I'm glad it wasn't all part of one mega chapter like the ending to the first version. I ended reSWAN on Johnny instead of Edgar like in the original SWAN because I liked getting to do a lot of repetition of key things in these last two chapters. Events, phrases, songs. The original ended on a repeated/focused word that just didn't quite linger in this one the way it did in the first one. It wasn't intentional, but I think the repeated focus we ended up with instead - Johnny's 'Trust me' - was more thematic to the whole anyway and it was better to end with it than anything Edgar could have thought. Plus, we were already in Edgar's head once to experience Johnny's song. Better to be with Johnny for it this time.
> 
> There's more fallout to deal with this time, which is something I really wanted to do. Edgar's experience with Nny's death has given him a bit of a lean toward recurring anxiety, Johnny's got *something* going on with his head, the others had some formative experiences without him that are going to keep informing them even though he's back now. In general, they've all learned even more that they don't trust the outside world. A group against the world really appeals to me, perhaps more than it originally did.
> 
> I am still hardly processing that I'm here, that I've done all this. That I have an *entire*, fuller, better, stronger version of SWAN now. And this one feels like one I can give to people without buckets of shame and terror. I am someone else because I did this, both times, and I selfishly hope you are too for having read it. 
> 
> I know it's pretty silly to be writing this much about the kind of non-event that is finishing super niche fanfic in a small and mostly dead fandom, but it means something big to me and, as I've said so much before, I've never been known for my brevity.
> 
> Thanks to those of you who have been reading this since I started it, either time, and especially both times because I know there are a few of you. Thank you for giving it a shot even though looking at pictures of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac covered in glitter and rainbows raises some eyebrows. Some of you read it without even having read the comics and became some of the most devoted fans this story has, thank you, you are wondrous. I'm so lucky so many of you tolerated me doing this. I'm never going to have room to do personal thanks to everyone here. I'll have to pin it up elsewhere. 
> 
> But this thing means the world to me, and so does people responding to it. Some months, I was writing *just* with the motivation of showing a friend One More Chapter. I did my best to keep the story just for me, but there were times that that one other person who was invested and cared really pushed me forward. 
> 
> I do have plans to rewrite the sequel to this story, so unless you're braced for a really awful follow up to this with motivations and things that don't make sense for these characters, please don't read the original ISH as a follow up to this! 
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this, I hope it did something good for you guys the way it did good things for me. Thanks so much for letting me show you my beloved glitter and garbage children derived from a murder comic. They mean more to me than they should. If you are interested in talking about them more, please some scream at me, I adore talking about this world and these people an absurd amount.
> 
> Thanks with love and glitter and some blood of questionable origin~ Lady

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Fires are Kindled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10223648) by [stifledlaughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stifledlaughter/pseuds/stifledlaughter)
  * [Down the Youtube Rabbit Hole](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765863) by [stifledlaughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stifledlaughter/pseuds/stifledlaughter)
  * [Conversations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407399) by [hellsperfecterrandboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsperfecterrandboy/pseuds/hellsperfecterrandboy)




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